


And When You Laugh, My Heart Goes Wiggly (as Slime)

by JayJEx



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Light Angst, M/M, Slime Rancher AU, SlimeRancher!Ronan, Slow Burn, SpaceCollegeStudent!Adam, oops i can't believe i actually wrote this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-07-08 17:59:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19873741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayJEx/pseuds/JayJEx
Summary: Adam looks at them. “You’re lying,” he concludes.“The fuck?” responds Ronan.“There’s no way you can tell the difference,” says Adam, gesturing at the corral with his hands. “They look the exact same.”“There are differences.”Adam gestures to the corral with his hands. “Where?” he asks.“Simple. Lady Squiggles-A-Lot is theextra squiggly one. Fucking duh,” says Ronan.“They’reslimes,” says Adam, throwing his hands up. “They’reallsquiggly.”“They’re notallsquiggly. Some of them arewiggly, and some of them arejiggly.”“Those words meanliterally nothing,” says Adam, deadpan.-or-The Slime Rancher AU that no one asked for.





	And When You Laugh, My Heart Goes Wiggly (as Slime)

Adam had read, once, that understanding the climate and geography of a planet could be the difference between success and failure. He doesn’t remember where he’d read it: probably one of the magazines in the tiny library on the asteroid mining station he’d grown up on, or maybe somewhere on one of the web terminals he used to surreptitiously use to do homework. Looking back at it, that particular piece of advice was probably more geared towards early explorers of celestial bodies and less relevant for desperate teenagers frantically applying to every university in the galaxy, but it hadn’t mattered at that point. He’d read it somewhere, and it sounded vaguely correct, and he’d internalized it, so he’d done it.

As such, Adam had begun researching the solar system around Johannes Kepler Interstellar University K1229 from practically the moment he’d received his acceptance letter. He knew its position on the star charts (267 parsecs off Earth, within Cygnus), the star the planet revolved around (Kepler-1229, red dwarf, discovered 2016 AD), and the planet itself (Kepler-1229b, super-Earth class, ~300° K average about the twilight zone).

As a part of his research, he distinctly remembered learning that the planet was tidally locked, with a near perfectly vertical axis compared to its orbit, leaving one side of the planet in perpetual daylight, and the other in eternal darkness. It struck him, in between his notes of “the role of the human suprachiasmatic nucleus in sleep regulation” and “disruption of circadian rhythm,” how appropriately named it was. The twilight zone: perpetually in between. No beginnings, no ends, no nights, no days, no seasons at all, living on the edge of eternal darkness and endless light. A literal borderland. The perfect place for him to begin the transition from the mining station to the rest of his life.

Which is why he was so confused when he found out that the school had _“summer break.”_

* * *

“So,” Gansey’s voice comes from behind him, startling him out of his thoughts. “How’s the summer job hunt going?”

Adam quickly shifts his terminal to hide the application page for the _Viscera Cleanup Detail_. “Good,” he says, curt.

Gansey raises an eyebrow. “Good?”

“Ok fine, sorry. It’s going _well_ ,” Adam corrects himself, rolling his eyes.

“Not what I meant, though I appreciate the proper grammar,” Gansey responds, settling into the chair next to Adam. Adam shifts the terminal in the other direction. “You know, I can’t help but feel like you, maybe, are not being entirely truthful when you say things are going _well_.”

“Would you think I was being truthful if I said things are going _good_?”

“Adam.”

“Ok fine,” he huffs. “What makes you think things are ‘not going well’?”

“Call me crazy -” Gansey starts, slowly leaning his body over Adam’s to try to look at the terminal screen. Adam angles it farther away from him. “- but I get the distinct feeling that you’re trying to hide your terminal screen from me.”

“Why would you think that?” asks Adam, trying to hide his terminal screen from Gansey.

“I don’t know, perhaps because you keep _turning the screen away from me_ ,” he says, craning his head over Adam’s shoulder.

“That doesn’t mean anything.” He turns the screen further.

“Maybe not by itself, specifically,” Gansey says, slowly rolling his chair to the other side of Adam. “But given the timing, and the question that I asked you at the beginning of this conversation, it _does_ seem rather suspicious.”

Adam pulls the terminal in closer to his chest, blocking Gansey’s view. “I think you’re being paranoid.”

“Perhaps I am,” Gansey admits, slowly. “Maybe you really are doing nothing important. Though, and I may be _mistaken_ -” he whips his body around with the last word, quickly moving his head over Adam’s other shoulder. Adam reacts instantly, shifting the terminal away from him. “- I’ve heard you can, in fact, use terminals to apply for jobs.”

“You can use terminals for many things,” says Adam. “They’re wonderfully diverse devices, with many functions -”

“Yes,” says Gansey, evenly. “Functions such as _applying for jobs._ ”

“And other things,” says Adam.

Gansey reaches out and grabs his terminal. “Adam, let me see your terminal.”

“No.”

“Why not?” says Gansey, abandoning all pretenses and trying to wrench the terminal out of Adam’s grip.

“Because I don’t want you to,” Adam pulls back.

Gansey grabs it with his other hand. “That’s not a reason, Adam.”

“I have a right to privacy,” says Adam, struggling against Gansey’s _surprisingly strong grip_. “Privacy is an inalienable right afforded to all sentient life forms under the jurisdiction of the Galactic Council -” Gansey starts pulling harder, “- _as defined by Amendment VII, Article 3, Subsection B. of the Galactic Charter_ -”

“Adam, I _know_ you. _You don’t actually care that much about galactic law,_ ” Gansey jerks the terminal towards him.

“What do you mean I don’t, how would you know that,” responds Adam, pulling back on the terminal with all the strength he can muster.

“We’ve been rooming together for a year, if you cared about laws you wouldn’t _leave your underwear all over our floor like a godless heathen, now let me see your terminal_ -”

“I can’t!”

“Adam!”

“It’s porn,” he pleads desperately, “it’s porn, I’m looking at porn, Gansey, _please -_ ”

“Adam, I _will_ break this terminal, and then I _will_ feel really bad about it and I _will_ be obligated to buy you a _newer and nicer terminal_ -”

“ _No!_ ”

“Then let go of it so I can _see_ -”

Adam braces his foot against Gansey’s chest and, with one final heave and a push of his leg, wrests the terminal out of Gansey’s arms, sending both of them sprawling on the ground as their chairs fall backwards away from each other. For a moment, the two of them stay on the floor, breathing embarrassingly heavily.

Gansey speaks up, breaking the silence. “I’m not going to stop, you know,” he says. He flops his arms menacingly at Adam from his position on the floor. “Once I regain feeling in my arms, I _will_ come over there and try to take your terminal again, and if you want me to stop, you’re going to have to answer my question -”

“Ok fine,” says Adam. He lets his head fall back onto the floor, grips his terminal against his chest and waits until his breathing evens out. “Fine,” he says. “It is, maybe, not an entirely inaccurate statement to say that my job hunting is, in fact, perhaps, not strictly or accurately defined as _currently going well_.”

Gansey cranes his neck up to give Adam a distinctly unimpressed look, though the effect is somewhat mitigated by the fact that he’s sprawled on his back with a chair half toppled on top of him. “Meaning?”

“...I’m applying to be a space viscera janitor,” he admits, quickly and half under his breath.

Gansey blanches. “You’re _what?!_ ”

* * *

Adam had spent the first eighteen years of his life doing nothing but work. He’d spent all of high school at the top of his class while simultaneously working two jobs. He’d come home after late night shifts and read his textbook by flashlight after curfew. He’d duck his father’s blows as best he could and do his homework through the throbbing of his bruises. He barely slept, the year he was applying for college, instead spending his nights reviewing the application process, studying for tests, honing his essays to a deadly and perfect edge. He was _forged_ from work, the very essence of his being was nothing less than perserverence and an iron will.

And he has never seen grit and determination before like _Richard Cambell Gansey III trying to find him a job that isn’t being a space viscera janitor_.

“Adam!” Gansey bursts into their room, huffing for breath like he’d run there, his eyes wide and crazed, holding his terminal aloft over his head like a very expensive bludgeoning weapon. “I found you a job that isn’t being a space viscera janitor!” he says, a little too excited to be considered a normal, sane person.

Adam sighs and falls back on his chair. “This better not be like the _last job_ you found me,” he says, trying his best to not sound annoyed.

Gansey curls defensively on himself. “The last job I found wasn’t _that bad_ -”

“You wanted me to work for _your mother_.”

“My mother is a well regarded Galactic Senator who could provide many worthwhile connections -”

“The first time we met, she called me _a commoner_.”

Gansey winces. “Ok, so she can be _a bit_ of an elitist -”

“She left the room to go wash her hands after she _accidentally picked up one of my books_ -”

“Ok, ok!” Gansey interrupts. “So it wasn’t my best idea. This -” he holds the terminal out to Adam, “- is _better_.”

Adam eyes the terminal suspiciously. “Are you _sure_?”

“Yes.”

“Are you _really_ sure -”

“ _Adam, just read the job listing_ ,” Gansey snaps. Adam rolls his eyes and takes the terminal, finding him face to face with the brightest, pinkest website he’s ever seen in his life.

lynch-farm:

> looking for a farmhand for the summer. room and board provided. will pay 5 percent.  
>  starmail if interested: lynchfarm@galaxy.com

Adam blinks. “This is not a job listing.”

“What do you mean it’s not a job listing?” He points at the post, as if he thinks that will make Adam more interested. “It says ‘looking for a farmhand for the summer’ right there on the first line.”

“Gansey, this is a post on -” he pauses to read the title of the website, “- a hot pink _Slime Ranching Discussion Forum_.”

“A post on a hot pink Slime Ranching Discussion Forum that’s _offering you room and board for the summer!_ ” Gansey says brightly, again gesturing at the screen with his hand. “You won’t even have to worry about finding a place to live!”

“No, I won’t,” Adam agrees, “because if I respond to this post, _I’m going to get murdered_.”

“What?”

“Gansey,” Adam deadpans, “this looks like it was written by a serial killer.”

“What do you mean by that?” Gansey demands.

Adams gestures incredulously at the screen. “This is a ‘job listing’ on a _hot pink public online forum_ that is _two sentences long_ with _no listed location, no listed requirements, and no job description._ ”

“Well -” Gansey flounders for a response, “- hot pink isn’t a very _murderer-ish_ color”

“And what the hell does ‘will pay 5 percent’ even mean?” He chooses to ignore Gansey’s last statement.

“Is the formatting of the job posting _really_ that important to you?” Gansey asks.

Adam gives him a distinctly unimpressed look. “Gansey, you, out of everyone here, understand that the way people format text says a lot about their personalities.” Gansey nods in agreement. “This text looks like it was formatted by someone who wants to _remove my kidneys and sell them on the black market -_ ”

“You’re not going to get murdered!” Gansey interrupts him. He looks at Adam, his face earnest. “Would I suggest that you take work from a _serial killer_?”

Adam does his best to make his face look even more unimpressed. “On purpose?” he asks.

Gansey rolls his eyes. “Ok, fine,” he says, sounding exasperated. “Let’s just say, _theoretically_ , that the job posting doesn’t look like serial killer clickbait. It’s pretty perfect for you, right?”

“But you admit it _does_ look like serial killer clickbait -”

“Just humour me,” Gansey pleads.

Adam sighs. “I don’t know, Gansey. It just - it doesn’t seem _ideal_ for me, somehow.”

Gansey’s face falls into his hands, and he makes a groaning sound into his palms. “Adam, how could this _not be ideal_? It’s a job _and_ a place to stay for the summer! _That’s literally everything you needed_!”

“Well,” now Adam finds _he’s_ the one floundering for a response. “I don’t know anything about slime ranching,” he protests. “What if it’s a shitty job -”

“Adam!” Gansey grips Adam’s face between his hands, smushing his cheeks together in the process. “Your other option is to be a _space viscera janitor!_ ”

“So?” he says, his words half distorted by the presence of Gansey’s hands on his face. “What if I want to be a space viscera janitor?”

Gansey looks _genuinely horrified_ now. “Why would you _want_ to be a space viscera janitor?!” he demands, shaking Adam by the face.

“It’s my life,” he mutters under his breath. He reaches up, gently removing Gansey’s hands from his face. “Look, Gansey, is there any way I could convince you to leave this alone?”

“You could find a job that isn’t being a space viscera janitor,” Gansey responds, deadpan.

Adam sighs. “Anything else?”

“Adam, please,” Gansey says emphatically, “I’m trying to help you.”

“Can you help me by letting me handle this?” Adam asks, exasperated. “Because, no offense, but I really can handle this on my own.”

“Adam, _you are trying to become a space viscera janitor,_ I think it’s safe to say that you’re out of your depth,” Gansey deadpans.

Adam bristles. “I’m not _’out of my depth’,_ ” he protests, more forceful than he needs to be.

“You _are_ ,” Gansey insists, reaching out to grip Adam’s arms. “I know you’re smart, and I know you’re a hard worker, but finding a job _and_ housing for the summer with this little notice is too much, even for you!”

“And what makes you think you can just decide that for me?” Adam asks, his voice now dangerously quiet.

“Decide -” Gansey stutters, increasingly desperate. “I didn’t _decide_ anything, that’s just - a statement of fact!”

“So, what?” Adam asks, his stomach a boiling, festering pit. “You thought I was too useless to handle it myself, so you just - appointed yourself my savior?”

“I - no!” Gansey says, sounding surprised, his voice rising in pitch. “Of course that’s not what I meant -”

“What else could you have meant?” Adam interrupts him.

“I just want to _help you_ -”

“You can help me by _butting out_.”

“ _Adam_ -”

“ _I don’t need your help, Gansey,_ ” Adam snaps, frustrated, knocking Gansey’s hands away with a swipe of his arm.

Gansey recoils, looking stricken, holding his hands tightly against his chest.

Adam pauses to take a deep breath, forcing tension within him out with his exhale. “Gansey,” he says, quieter than before. “I’m - I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have snapped, I just -” he sighs, searching for the words to explain himself, “- I need to do this _myself_. I know it sounds crazy, I just - I have to do this.”

Gansey looks away, refusing to meet his eyes. “I know,” he says softly. “I know. I’m sorry. It was just a suggestion.” He continues to look like a kicked puppy.

Adam groans and falls out of his chair, flopping onto his small bed. “Ok, _fine_ ,” he relents. “I’ll apply. _But_ -” he sticks his finger in Gansey’s rapidly brightening face, “- that doesn’t mean I’ll take the job if I get accepted. I’m just going to apply to see what kind of response I get. Deal?”

Gansey clasps his finger in both hands, looking a little bit happier than Adam thinks his concession warrants. “Deal,” he says primly, and shakes his finger vigorously.

* * *

To: lynchfarms@galaxy.com  
From: aparrish@k1229.edu  
Subject: Application for Position of Farmhand

Dear Mr. Lynch,

I came across your job posting on the slime rancher forums. It is with great interest that I am applying to be a farmhand for the summer at your farm. While I have not worked on a slime ranch before, I have reviewed the general duties typical for a farmhand on a slime ranch and have found that they closely match my own work experience. I have provided a copy of my resume for review.

As a worker in an asteroid mining station, I have ample experience in manual labor, and am accustomed to working long hours. I also have experience in the maintenance and repair of 7Zee Corporation technology from my position as a mechanic in Boyd’s Starship Repair Co.

My resume is attached below. If I can provide you with further information about my qualifications, please let me know.

Regards,

Adam Parrish.  
aparrish@k1229.edu  
1400 Hubble Blvd Suite 209  
Johannesburg, K1229b, KOI-2418

Adam_Parrish_Resume.pdf [Download](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bZJ3KjpIEPO5na-2NFXFKwokkWRcH0Ph/view?usp=sharing)

* * *

He’d just returned from taking his Intro to Terraforming final when the reply comes. Only three days remain before the dorms close for the break, and his job hunting prospects look as bleak as ever, so he’d been watching his inbox like a hawk, hoping for any signs of salvation.

From: lynchfarms@galaxy.com  
To: aparrish@k1229.edu  
Subject: Re: Application for Position of Farmhand

sure. hired.

This guy’s definitely a serial killer.

“Gansey,” Gansey looks up from where he was distractedly tapping away on his terminal, “come look at this for a second.” Gansey cocks his head curiously, before scooting his way over to behind Adam so he can see the computer terminal. He makes a humming sound from the back of his throat.

“Well,” he says brightly, “you got the job!” 

“Gansey,” Adam turns to look at him, his face deadpan. “This man is going to harvest my organs.”

“Oh come now Adam,” Gansey says, looking amused, “it’ll be fine. I checked, this man runs a legitimate business.”

Adam stares at him in response. “What do you mean, ‘you checked’?”

Gansey grins sheepishly. “ I, uh, did a little research on this Lynch person, and everything checks out. He’s for real.”

Adam glares. “Did you run a background check on him?” Gansey holds his hands up in silent surrender.

“What I did or did not do to get that information is irrelevant. The point is that he’s a real slime rancher offering you a real job as a real farmhand. _And_ , he’ll give you real food and a real place to stay for the break. That’s good, right?”

“I still don’t know what he means by ‘will pay five percent’.”

“Oh, I think he means he’ll pay you five percent commission on the stuff you harvest for him.”

Adam slowly blinks in response. “And how did you know that?”

“I...may have done more than just _a little research_ ,” Gansey replies, pointedly looking away from Adam.

“Gansey -”

“Come on, Adam,” Gansey interrupts him. “Look, it’s a real job offer, ok? And there’s no way it’s any worse than being a _space janitor._ ”

“You probably don’t even have to worry about that,” Adam admits with a sigh. “They never even responded to my application.”

Gansey’s expression brightens significantly. “They didn’t? Adam that’s -” Adam glares at him, “- horrible, I’m so sorry to hear that, is there anything I can do to help?”

“I’m touched by your concern,” says Adam, sarcastically sincere.

“Still,” says Gansey, “that makes your decision a lot easier, then.”

Adam says nothing.

“Right, Adam?” Gansey prompts.

Still nothing.

“...Adam?”

“I could go back.” Adam says, quietly.

Gansey pauses before responding. “Back?” he asks, his eyes locked onto Adam’s.

Adam nods. “Back to the mining station,” he says. _Back to his father,_ he doesn’t say.

Now it’s Gansey’s turn to stay silent. “Adam,” his voice turns quiet, as if fearing someone will overhear. “You can’t seriously be considering going back there, right?”

“Why not?” says Adam.

“Because I - your father - the things he did -” Gansey sputters. He’s being careful. They’ve had this argument before. He can’t fault Gansey for not wanting to have it again.

Adam shrugs. “I lived there for eighteen years,” he points out. “What’s one more summer?”

Gansey pauses. “I - there’s no way you want to -”

“I don’t,” Adam admits, quietly. “But what choice do I have?”

“I - you - be a slime rancher!” says Gansey. Adam can’t see his face, is still turned away from him. Not that he needs to see. The desperation is on full display in the tone of his voice. “There’s no way being a slime rancher is worse than going back to -” he stops himself with a sharp intake of breath.

For a moment, Adam turns and meets his gaze, his breath held. Then, he looks away, towards the rough drywall ceiling above him. 

_I have to escape,_ he thinks. _I’m the one who has to escape. Not Gansey_.

“I’ll consider it,” he says out loud.

* * *

In his dreams, he’s back in the asteroid mining station.

“Stupid boy,” his father says. “You thought you could escape? You thought you had a choice?” He shakes his head disapprovingly. “You’re trash. Just like me. Just like every single speck of dust on this piece of shit mining station.”

Adam takes a step back. He doesn’t move at all. The room fades away. The walls close in around him. The air feels deadly still. The hum of the ventillation system roars in his one remaining ear. His other ear throbs. “You’re wrong,” he says. “I’m out. I’m gone. I’ve moved on. I left.”

His father tsks. “You ever heard of gravity? You know my rules, boy. ‘What goes up must come down’. Be they star, or be they man: it matters not. All creation is bound to fall.”

“No,” Adam insists desperately. “No, you’re _wrong_. I left. I’m not like this place. I worked my way out. I - I earned it. I earned my way out - I _worked_ for it -”

“You think you can leave? You think you can rise above this trash? You think yourself exempt from the laws of the universe? Look around you,” his father commands, gesturing to the rusted, crumbling station interior. “Every fiber of your being, every cell, every drop of blood, every molecule in your body itself came from within these walls. That’s all you are. That’s all you’ll ever be. Celestial trash -”

“You’re wrong -”

“- insignificant speck -”

“ _Stop -_ ”

“- cosmic lint, astronomical noise, sub-planetary ejecta, debris lost in the endless void of space, inutile junk abandoned in orbit, dust, dust, _dust_ -”

He wakes in a puddle of his own cold sweat, sprawled out on the floor of his dorm room.

He lies still for a moment and waits, waits for his heartbeat to steady, his breathing to even out, presses his palms against the cold floor beneath him, cooling his sweaty, feverish skin. Then, quietly, so as not to wake Gansey, he grabs his terminal from the nightstand.

* * *

To: lynchfarms@galaxy.com  
From: aparrish@k1229.edu  
Subject: Re: Re: Application for Position of Farmhand

Dear Mr. Lynch,

I am pleased to inform you that I have decided to accept your offer for the position of farmhand at Lynch Farm and Ranch. Thank you again for the generous opportunity. I am eager to begin working and making a positive contribution to your farm.

As previously discussed, my salary will be 5% commission on the plorts that I sell while employed for you. Room and board will be provided for me while I am under your employment. I will also require some form of transportation to get to your ranch.

If there is any additional paperwork or information you would like, please let me know.

Regards,

Adam Parrish.  
aparrish@k1229.edu  
1400 Hubble Blvd Suite 209  
Johannesburg, K1229b, KOI-2418

* * *

Adam checks his terminal screen again, still unsure if this was the right place. Johannesburg Space Elevator Launch Bay I-19 reminds him of the supply depot back on the mining station: industrial, gray, and full of random junk - although, admittedly, with much less grime and rust. Still, if Adam was planning to surreptitiously kidnap and/or murder someone, this was exactly the sort of place he’d choose to do it: far out of the way, empty, and with convenient access to the endless void of space to escape and/or potentially dump a body.

In other words, this is, by all accounts, a horrible, terrible idea.

He’d sent a couple emails back and forth with Ronan - though Ronan never really deigned to send back more than a couple words at a time, and he hadn’t really managed to get any more information out of him. Ronan had only given him a location and a time, offering a cryptic “i’ll explain when u get here” to Adam’s other questions, which didn't help to alleviate Adam’s concerns.

After he’d accepted the job, he’d done a little research for himself on Lynch Farms. Apparently, most ranchers on the FFR-16 (colloquially called the Far, Far, Range) started out on lease from the 7Zee corporation, but Lynch Farm and Ranch hadn’t shown any sort of affiliation with them, so they must have had enough money to begin slime ranching independently. They also seemed to turn a decent profit, and he hadn’t found anyone online complaining about them, but he also hadn’t managed to find anybody who’d _actually worked for them before_ , so no luck there.

The only thing he had managed to find about Ronan himself was an article from several years ago on a local news site titled “Mysterious Death of Successful Slime Rancher” detailing the presumed murder of a Mr. Niall Lynch. The article itself was short, and relatively sparse in details. Ronan had only been mentioned once, in passing, listed among the sons of the victim, underneath a picture of three boys with dark, curly hair. At the very least, the article proved that Ronan was a real person, and the idea that he could have inherited his father’s slime ranch wasn’t far-fetched, but it hadn’t held any information about _how good of a boss he was,_ or _whether or not he paid a fair amount of money to his employees,_ or _whether or not he grew up to be a serial killer._

“You don’t look like mail,” comes a voice from his side, startling him out of his thoughts and straight into a pile of very uncomfortable junk.

He looks up and finds himself looking up at a light blonde, pale man in work coveralls, only ones that had been _bedazzled_ with chunks of cheap, plastic rhinestones. He smiles down at where Adam still lay on top of several cardboard boxes of spare parts. “Hi,” he says. “I’m Noah.”

“Hi,” responds Adam. “I’m Adam.” He shifts his body, trying to dislodge himself from the hard, lumpy object digging itself into the small of his back. “What do you mean ‘I don’t look like male’?”

“You don’t look like mail,” Noah repeats unhelpfully.

Adam looks down at himself, frowning. “I know I’m not particularly masculine,” he says, “but - I mean - I’m very clearly not a girl -”

“Gender is fake,” says Noah, “And not male. _Mail_ ”

“What?”

“You know.” says Noah, gesturing to the hanger around them. “Like packages and shipping and such.”

“Oh. _Mail_ ,” says Adam, finally understanding. He pauses. “What does that have to do with anything.”

“It’s just kind of atypical to see things that _aren’t_ mail come through here,” says Noah.

“It is?”

“Well, yeah,” says Noah. He gestures to the hanger around them. “This _is_ a postal shipping dock.”

_“It is?”_ Adam sweeps his gaze across the hanger around him. _It looks exactly like the postal port from back on the mining station._

“It is,” confirms Noah with a nod. He pauses to give Adam a concerned look. “Are you lost?”

“I - I guess so?” Adam pulls out his terminal to double check the email Ronan had sent him. “Is this launch bay I-19?” he reads off from the email.

“Yep,” says Noah brightly.

“Well then I guess I’m supposed to be here? Unless Ronan made a typo...” Adam lets his voice trail off at the end, lost in thought.

“Oh! Did you just say ‘Ronan’?” asks Noah, his facial expression suddenly lighting up.

Adam pauses his thinking. “Yes?” he says somewhat apprehensively.

Noah pulls out his clipboard and flips through a couple pages. “You’re name wouldn’t happen to be Adam, would it?” he asks, his eyes narrowing in at a specific point on the page in front of him. Adam really doesn’t like the sound of that.

“It is,” he admits hesitantly. “Why?”

Noah clicks his pen and makes a mark on the page in front of him, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth. “Yeah ok, Ronan _would_ do that.”

“Do what?”

“Use postal services to get people to his ranch,” says Noah nonchalantly.

“What?” says Adam.

Noah gestures to him with his hand. “You know,” he says. “Mail someone to his ranch. You in this case.”

“Is that what’s happening?” asks Adam. “Is he mailing me to his ranch?”

“I guess so?”

“He’s _mailing_ me?”

“Looks like it.”

“Like a package?”

Noah frowns silently, like he actually has to think about the answer to that question. “Not necessarily,” he says finally, “though it could certainly be arranged. I probably have a box around here that could fit you in it, though you’ll need a lot of bubble wrap, it’s kind of a bumpy ride...” his voice trails off, and he looks around him, as if searching for a suitably large box.

“Ronan is _mailing me_?” Adam asks, still stuck on the fact that he’s getting mailed.

“Well don’t look at me, I just work here,” says Noah.

“Do I _look_ like a package -”

“Can we leave soon?” Noah interrupts him, checking his watch. “If we stay any longer, I’ll be late for my deliveries, and I’ll get my pay docked again.”

* * *

He finds himself regretting all of his life decisions in the passenger’s seat of Noah’s shuttle, which is difficult, because the outside and the inside of Noah’s shuttle look like it had been decorated by a colorblind toddler weilding a metric ton of rainbow glitter with all the precision and grace of a rocket plowing into the side of an orbital space station.

( _“Ronan and I decorated it together!”_ Noah had told him, like it was something to be proud of. Adam guesses it kind of is, that they managed to decorate a ship in such a loud and ostentatious way that even _Adam Parrish, asteroid mining trash extroardinaire_ thinks it looks tacky.)

“I still can’t believe he’s mailing me to his ranch,” mutters Adam, quietly and under his breath.

Noah somehow hears him over the roar of the rocket engines. “Are you still on that?” he asks, glancing up at Adam, who nearly jumps out of his seat in response.

“I - I mean -” Adam stutters, “- there has to be a law against this, right?”

“There are actually several laws,” says Noah.

“Can I be held accountable for this?” Adam asks, worried. Most misdemeanors warrant a fine of up to three thousand newbucks per infraction, and he can barely afford to buy the extra spicey space ramen half the time. “Am I doing something illegal?”

“It’s probably too late to point this out,” says Noah, “but you didn’t _actually_ have to get on my shuttle. You could have just left.”

“No, I couldn’t do that,” says Adam, shaking his head. “I made a commitment, and I intend to see it through,” he says, because that sounds less bad than _I have nowhere else to stay for the summer, and working for Ronan sounded marginally better than going back to my abusive father._

“You must have been really desperate,” says Noah with an inquisitive look, somehow reading the thoughts in Adam’s mind. “Did you try applying to the _Viscera Cleanup Detail?”_

_Welp,_ thinks Adam. “They never got back to me,” he admits with a sigh.

Noah winces sympathetically. “Yikes,” he says, “I guess you really _are_ desperate.”

“My prospective employer is _mailing me to his ranch_ and I haven’t quit yet,” says Adam. “You really don’t need to rub it in.”

“Well -” Noah pauses, thoughtful. “- to be fair to Ronan, it’s not like there were many better options. There’s no shuttle line to the FFR system, he can’t leave his ranch unattended to come pick you up, and a private transporter is too expensive.”

“Oh,” says Adam.“That actually makes sense.” Horrifyingly, he finds he _does_ feel a little better now.

“I mean don’t get me wrong,” says Noah, as if sensing Adam’s relief. “He probably finds this whole thing hilarious.”

“Honestly,” says Adam, turning to look out the cockpit window and to the void of space in front of him, “as long as there’s some semblence of reason behind his actions, I think I’m - that’s an asteroid belt,” he says, pointing at the huge expanse of asteroids that is _rapidly approaching them_.

“Yes,” says Noah, looking unconcerned, in stark contrast to Adam, who is inching closer and closer to panic.

“Noah,” says Adam, “you are about to fly into an asteroid belt.”

“I’m aware,” says Noah, not even looking up at Adam to respond, his gaze intense as it locks onto the space in front of them.

“Far be it from me to tell you how to do your job,” says Adam, trying desperately to keep the panic in his voice from showing, “but I don’t think your customers would appreciate having their mail _crash into an asteroid and explode_ -”

“Listen,” says Noah, “Ronan has 7Zee Prime. That means four hour rush deliveries, guaranteed. Going around would take too long.”

_Actually, on second thought, I hope I die,_ thinks Adam, and then Noah slams his foot on the accelerator, lauching them forwards, nearly throwing Adam from his seat in the process.

* * *

They land on a platform in a small clearing of the surprisingly familiar looking trees, next to what looks like a small black luxury cruiser, in stark contrast to the loud, glittery color vomit on the hull of Noah’s ship. Adam had meant to get a better look at the topography of the planet and the area around the ranch, but unfortunately he’d been too busy _trying not to hurl_ from all the sharp turns Noah kept taking.

Noah himself seems completely unaffected by his own erratic flying, casually pushing the boxes down the loading ramp and towards a structure that vaguely resembled a barn. Adam, still queasy, slowly steps after him onto the dirt below. He takes a moment to pause and catch his breath and look around, taking careful stock of his surroundings.

“If you’re planning to rob Ronan, I’m probably not going to help you,” Adam nearly jumps out of his skin as Noah silently reappears next to him. “He’s the only person on my route who tips me for deliveries.”

“I’m not going to rob - Ronan tips you for delivering his mail?” Adam asks, confused.

Noah shrugs. “Hey, you saw that asteroid belt I had to fly through to get here,” he says, which - fair, honestly.

“I’m just looking around,” explains Adam. “I want to know what kind of place this is.” He’d researched the FFR system before coming, of course, but found a dearth of information. He _was_ genuinely kind of curious to see what a slime ranch looked like. And anyway, he could probably do with a look around. If things with this Lynch person go really bad, it’d probably help to have an escape route on hand.

“Well, can’t blame you for that,” says Noah. “This is place _is_ really nice. Everything here is. Well -” he frowns, cutting himself off. “Everything except Blue. And Ronan, come to think of it. Ronan’s kind of an dick sometimes.”

“I thought he tipped you?” asks Adam, confused.

“I mean yeah, he’s _mostly_ chill, but - he can be kind of wild.”

“What do you mean by wild?” asks Adam slowly.

Noah shrugs, thoughtful. “He’s just like - vaguely crazy?”

“What do you mean by _that_?” says Adam, increasingly worried.

“I don’t know, man,” Noah makes an “ _eh_ ” gesture with his hands. “He just does wild things sometimes.”

“Like what?”

Noah points to him. “Like mailing people to ranch.”

Adam blinks, surprised. “I thought you said that actually made sense, given the context.”

“Also, he pushed me out of a window once.”

“He _what_ -”

“Quit telling people that story, Czerny, it was your fault for being a dick bag and you know it,” Adam hears a voice call from his left. He turns to see a tall man walking towards them - presumably Ronan - dressed in a black torn shirt and skinny jeans, with short, buzz cut hair and bright blue eyes. The way he moves reminds Adam of a predator: smooth and graceful, but power behind every step. Everything about him screams danger.

He is the most beautiful person Adam has ever seen. He swallows thickly.

Ronan rolls his eyes, lazily strolling past Adam to bump fists with Noah, a familiar gesture that looks kind of strange when done by _the reincarnation of a wild panther dressed as a high school goth kid_ and _the universe’s most glittery delivery man._

“Where’s my shit?” Ronan grouses.

“I put the royal jelly in the refinery, the drone parts in the fabricator, and the new slimeball hoop with the extra echo nets,” Noah responds, checking each one off of his clipboard as he goes along. “Oh, and I put your new farmhand, uh, here, in front of you,” he said, vaguely gesturing to Adam with his hands.

Ronan turns to fix his piercing gaze on to Adam. His expression looked almost impassive, his mouth neutrally flat, but, if Adam looked closely, he could see his eyes narrowing just the slightest bit, as if to size him up. He forces himself to keep a carefully neutral expression as he meets Ronan’s gaze.

Ronan’s frown deepens.

“Who the fuck are you?” he asks.

Adam blinks, surprised. “I’m Adam,” he responds evenly. “I’m your new farmhand.”

Ronan swears quietly under his breath. “Was that today?” He looks at Noah. Noah shrugs.

“It was definitely today,” says Adam, drawing Ronan’s attention back towards him. He fixes his gaze back on Adam, questioning. “Our last starmail said specifically that I’m supposed to begin work on -”

“Ok, but why do you look like that?” he asks.

Adam blinks again. “Sorry?”

“You look like a college kid.”

“I _am_ a college kid,” he says.

“Yeah, but you _look_ like a college kid,” Ronan says, unhelpfully. Adam had been hoping that Ronan would be more verbose and better at explaining things in person. Adam should really know better than to hope for things.

“Am I meant to look some other way?” he asks, trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. Something flashes through Ronan’s eyes, too quick for Adam to identify, before his scowling mask comes back into place.

“No,” he says with a sigh, like the answer personally offends him, “but you could have at least -”

“You need to sign this,” Noah says, interrupting their impromptu staring contest to push his clipboard and pen at Ronan. 

Ronan breaks his gaze away from Adam to roll his eyes. He takes the outstretched clipboard and pen with a huff. 

“Wait, what the fuck?” he asks, scanning the page with his eyes. “Why is this shit so expensive?”

“Oh, shipping humans through postal services is illegal,” Noah explains breezily, “so I added the fine for the violation to your bill.”

_Take that, asshole_ , thinks Adam.

“You’re not getting a tip today,” says Ronan.

* * *

By the time they had arrived at the ranch proper, Adam had completely given up on trying to characterize Ronan based on any perceivable aesthetic choices that he made. He’d gone from the _horribly inept color vomit_ on the hull of Noah’s ship to the _vaguely hot emo space janitor chic_ fashion he was somehow managing to make look good to the _surprisingly charming and homey but old timey sci-fi_ look of Lynch Farms, all in the span of the two hours it had taken him to get from the space elevator to the FFR system. It almost made Adam afraid to go inside the actual ranch house itself. At this point, he half expected the interior to look like a medieval castle, the way things were going.

The outside of the house, at least, looked reminiscent of the igloo like structures standard to the exploration of foreign planets, only one that had been so thoroughly modified as to have had its original shape completely destroyed. Rooms that were clearly later additions to the house jutted out of its sides like sore thumbs. Someone had attempted to retrofit a front porch to the small door that served as the main entrance, but had failed to remember that the house behind the porch was curved, leaving portions of it completely unattached to the house itself.

“Welcome to the Barns,” Ronan drawls, carelessly yanking the door open and stepping into the interior, which, thankfully for Adam’s sanity, looks to be in line with the aesthetics of the rest of the ranch. He leads him past the cozy looking living and dining area to a very nondescript looking room in the back.

“You’ll stay here. Feel free to put your shit wherever. Bathroom’s that door,” Ronan gestures to a door in the back. “I’ve got to grab something, so...fuck, I don’t know. Look around. Or whatever,” he says, with exactly the sort of grace and eloquence that Adam expects from him at this point.

He slips his bag off of his shoulders to the foot of the bed, dutifully placing his clothes neatly into the dresser provided for him. The room around him was nicer than he had expected, both spacious and clean. He tests the mattress with his hand, and found it surprisingly soft and smooth to touch. The bathroom also looks unexpectedly nice, the white countertop glistening as he set the cup with his toothbrush down on top of it, and the showerhead is tall enough for him to actually stand up straight under it, a luxury hardly anyone could afford in space.

He’d just finished hooking his terminal up to the dock on the desk when Ronan returns, holding a strange looking backpack with a nozzle coming out of its side.

“Here, put this on,” he says, holding the pack up to Adam. He’d apparently found the time to change shirts in the time that he’d stepped away, now wearing a faded white tank top that shows even more skin than the torn shirt he’d been wearing before. Adam can see the beginnings of tattoos curling around from the back of his broad shoulders, inky black feathers that perfectly frame the edge of Ronan’s collarbone. If he looks even closer, he can almost picture underneath the straps of the tank top, where the tan expanse of Ronan’s skin slowly grows paler and pinker the farther down his eyes drift along his muscular -

“Okay,” Ronan interrupts his thoughts. “You start tomorrow then.”

“Oh,” says Adam, surprised. “Wait - oh.”

Ronan rolls his eyes. “What is it?” he asks, sounding annoyed.

“I mean - it’s just - I figured you would -” Adam pauses. Ronan looks at him expectantly. “- you know, train me, or something.”

“...Why would I do that?” asks Ronan, after a moment.

“Well, I mean, you know. I’ve never...ranched slimes? Before?”

Ronan blinks his eyes at him, unintentionally batting his long, luscious eyelashes, though the effect is somewhat ruined by the fact that he looks completely dead inside. “You haven’t?” he asks.

“No,” Adam confirms.

“Let me get this straight,” Ronan says, “you applied to be a farmhand on a slime ranch without _actually knowing anything about slime ranching._ ”

“Yes,” Adam confirms. He definitely wrote that on his application.

Ronan inhales slowly, then lets the breath out with his response. “I don’t know what I expected,” he says. Adam refrains from pointing out that he _would_ have known what to expect if he’d just _read his starmail_.

“Sorry?” he offers instead, through his gritted teeth. Annoying as this is, Adam really _would_ prefer to not be fired on his first day. The _Viscera Cleanup Detail_ still haven’t starmailed him back.

“I swear to fucking Jesus,” Ronan mutters, seemingly ignoring Adam. “Now I have to waste my time training some stupid college kid -”

“Sorry for the inconvenience,” Adam manages to force out of his throat.

“- entitled piece of shit,” Ronan continues, dropping the strange backpack on the ground to search through the shelves of the room. “Thinks he can just waltz onto my farm for a summer without _any work experience_ -”

“Not to be _rude_ ,” says Adam, voice straining, “but if you had just read the starmail that I sent you, _I very clearly stated_ -”

“Like seriously,” says Ronan, “does this look like a fucking charity house -”

“Listen here you massive fucking whiny piece of shit,” Adam snaps, “do you seriously think I would have willingly offered to come stay on your shitty farm and do your shitty work for an entire fucking summer if I could have afforded to stay literally _anywhere else_ in the galaxy?”

If he wasn’t fired before, he’s definitely fired now.

For a moment, Ronan only looks at him, clearly stunned into silence. And then, he cracks, throws his head back and starts laughing, the sound ringing out loud across the room like a bell, like a cannon, like thunder and lightning, like a supernova deep in Adam’s heart, exploding with energy, filling his stomach with butterflies, turning his insides to mush, expanding outwards like a mini big bang, the start of a new universe -

_What the fuck?_ thinks the part of Adam’s brain that’s somehow still functioning.

“Fuck, ok,” Ronan says after he stops laughing, his face settling back into a more neutral expression, though he looked significantly less surly than he’d looked _before Adam had simultaneously insulted his home, ranch, and occupation to his face_. “Hang on. I have to go find the _Slimepedia_ ,” he says, and then he pushes past the shattered remains of Adam Parrish and into the living room.

* * *

He manages to cobble together enough shards of his psyche to vaguely resemble a functional human being by the time Ronan takes him out on a tour of the ranch.

(The _Slimepedia_ Ronan had mentioned turned out to be a codex that had been filled with extremely useful information about the FFR system and slime biology that Ronan had let Adam read for all of about five minutes before he’d gotten _“tired of watching his ass sit around and read”_ and declared that he would just _“show Adam around him-goddamn-self”_ and promptly yanked the codex out of Adam’s grasp before he could even finish reading the first entry. Adam still had no clue how he was supposed to do his job, or even how the _“vacpack”_ Ronan had given him to wear worked, but he did now know, courtesy of the first half of the first entry, that slimes were a thing that existed and that some of them were pink.

He figures he can go back and read it later.)

They step out of the house and start walking to wherever the slimes are being held. Lynch Farms is admittedly beautiful, filled with wild grasses and flowering plants. Strange, colorful floating lights had been arranged with care around a golden statue of a slime. Off to the side of the main house, a tree with bright, red cube shaped fruits grows in a patch of mulchy looking dirt. A mechanical looking bird drifts lazily past them.

The actual slimes themselves were kept in pens in the shadow of the cliff face next to the ranch, walled in with fences made from strangely pulsing energy. Ronan pauses in front of a pen filled to bursting with large slimes with strangely rock like shapes coming out of their bodies, smiling happily as they bounce all over each other. Adam notes that they are, in fact, pink.

Of course, Ronan remained just as concise and unhelpful in person as he was over starmail.

“These are the slimes.” Ronan gestures to the slimes with his hands.

Adam nods.

“They need to be fed shit regularly, or they’ll get cranky.”

“Ok,” Adam says. He updates his mental list of information. _Slimes exist and some of them are pink and they need to eat things or they will get mad_.

Ronan somehow finds this a sufficient explanation, and moves on. “These are called plorts.” Ronan says, gesturing to a strange pink diamond shaped lump on the floor. Adam stares at it silently. “They need to be harvested.”

“Ok,” Adam repeats, looking at the very bouncy slimes with _hard and painful looking rock like growths on their backs aggressively jumping up and down on top of the plort that he was supposed to be harvesting._ He tries to keep the displeasure out of his expression.

Ronan frowns at him.

“Ooookaay,” he says, stretching the word out, still watching Adam. “We can move onto these,” he walks over to a strange, glowing pillar with a tray of ash at the bottom.

Adam looks inside of it. The slimes at the bottom are _literally on fucking fire_.

“I suppose I’m meant to be harvesting the - plorts from these ones as well?” he asks neutrally.

“...Yes?” says Ronan, his eyes still fixed on Adam.

Adam takes a good, long pause to come to turn with the burn wounds he’s going to inflict on himself before responding. “Ok.”

Ronan’s frown deepens.

Adam represses the urge to sigh. Somehow Ronan is _worse_ at communicating his feelings than Adam is, a feat that would be impressive if it wasn’t so depressing. “Is something the matter?” he asks, careful to keep his stoic mask in place.

“You’re doing it again,” Ronan only says. Adam looks around him, lost. As far as he could tell, all he’d been outwardly _doing again_ was standing around and listening to Ronan speak.

“What am I doing again?” he asks, confused.

“The thing.”

“What?” Adam responds.

“You know.” Ronan points at him. “ _The thing_.”

“I’m sorry,” says Adam, “I really have no clue what you’re talking about.”

Ronan just huffs out a sigh, and turns to face away from him. “It’s nothing,” he says finally. He gestures with his hand to the cliff face behind him. “Come on, I’ll show you the Grotto.”

* * *

He follows Ronan through a narrow crack in the cliff face to find the most beautiful cave he’d ever seen. It was covered in multicolored crystals that shone with iridescent light, illuminating the cave walls in brilliant colors. The effect is somewhat broken by the floating lights that someone had clearly arranged to look like a penis in the middle of the cave, but still. It was hard not to be enchanted by the cave’s natural beauty.

Of course, Ronan then immediately ruins it by revealing that the slimes inside the cave tended to _explode violently_ and are also _extremely radioactive_.

“You’re doing that thing again.” Ronan says as Adam is making his best impression of a person who isn’t mentally calculating the cost of treatment for radiation poisoning/cancer/explosion wounds.

“What?” Adam looks at him.

“That thing with your face.” Ronan repeats.

“What thing?” Adam asks, now feeling thoroughly harassed.

“You know,” Ronan says, gesturing at his face unhelpfully with his hands. “The thing that makes you look like you’re a constipated, stuck up, entitled college kid.”

Adam blinks, confused. “This is just what my face looks like,” he says.

“No, it’s not,” Ronan says, as if _he’s_ the one who’s obviously right instead of the one _arguing with Adam about what his own face looks like_.

“Well, what is my face _supposed_ to look like, then,” Adam asks.

Ronan shrugs in response. “I don’t know. It looked better when you insulted me.”

“Would you like me to insult you again?” Adam asks, and he really should be more alarmed by the fact that _that was a serious question that he had just asked his employer on the first day of his new job._

Ronan, being Ronan, of course, just shrugs again. “Go fucking wild,” he says, “hit me with your best shot.”

Adam draws a blank. “You’re…bald?” he tries. Ronan looks unimpressed.

“All those years at a fancy fucking space university,” he says, completely deadpan “and the best insult you can come up with is to tell me that I’m bald.”

_I’m studying exoplanetary civil engineering, not insulting people,_ he thinks. “I’m…sorry my insulting people skills are not satisfactory?” he says out loud.

Ronan sighs. “Ok,” he says, “let’s try somewhere else.”

* * *

He follows Ronan into an overgrown forest-looking area filled with dense shrubbery. It is (annoyingly, like the rest of the ranch) very pretty looking, but all the plants snag and hook at his shoes, and he can already feel the bug bites forming on his legs, so this is already his least favorite part of the ranch. 

_At least these chickens are kind of cute,_ Adam thinks, right before one wanders into the slime corral and _immediately gets devoured by the slimes inside_.

“God damnit,” says Ronan. Muttering under his breath, he walks over to where a strange metallic bird is perched on an equally metallic branch and kicks the base of its perch. The bird whirs to life, and starts gently floating towards the nearby patch of fruit trees.

Ronan turns back to him and rolls his eyes. 

“Don’t give me that look,” he says, sounding clearly annoyed. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“I see,” says Adam.

“Normally they eat fruit, ok,” he says, more insistently than before. “It’s just - the stupid bird is slacking off, so they haven’t been fed. I don’t normally feed them the Hen-Hens.”

“I see,” repeats Adam. “So is that what happens when they’re not fed?”

Ronan shrugs. “More or less?” he says.

“Ok,” he says, slower than before. He makes a mental note to _keep these slimes in particular very well fed at all times_.

Ronan rolls his eyes so hard his entire head moves with the motion. “Jesus fuck,” he says emphatically. “You’re _impossible._ ”

Adam swallows his sigh of exasperation. “What do you mean?” he asks.

“You’re _still doing it._ ”

Adam takes a deep breath. “Ronan,” he says, keeping his voice level. “I truly have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Ronan looks at him incredulously. “You seriously don’t even realize what you’re doing, do you?”

“No.”

“God damnit,” says Ronan.

_You’re terrible at explaining things,_ he thinks. “I’m...sorry,” he says out loud, forcing the word “sorry” out past his gritted teeth, “but I’m really going to need an explanation of what, exactly, it is that I’m doing that you find so annoying.”

Ronan points at him. “It’s your face,” he says.

“My face is annoying,” says Adam.

“Yes,” says Ronan, before he immediately thinks better of it. “Fuck. No. _Yes._ ” He groans, and flails an arm out at Adam’s face, as if that will somehow clarify his point. “Not your face, your - _facial expression_.”

“Oh,” says Adam. Maybe there’s some hope of having a halfway productive conversation with Ronan after all. “What about it is annoying?”

“I don’t like it,” says Ronan. 

Adam has to close his eyes for a second. He can physically feel cracks begin to form in his neutral facade. “Precisely why not?” he asks.

“It looks bad,” says Ronan.

The cracks grow. “My face looks bad?” he asks.

“Yes. _No_.” He catches hiimself even quicker this time. “Stop that!”

“Stop what?” asks Adam.

“Stop making it sound like I’m saying mean things about your face,” he points his finger at Adam accusingly, like this is somehow Adam’s fault.

Adam deadpans. “I am literally verbatim repeating what you are saying to me.”

Ronan grips at his head, as if to run his fingers through his nonexistant hair. “I’m not saying your face pisses me off,” he says, “The _way your face looks_ pisses me off.”

Adam’s brain short circuits. “What?” he asks.

Ronan groans and throws his hands up in exasperation. “Fuck it,” he says. “Let’s just go see the ocean,” and then he stomps off towards the other side of the ranch.

* * *

He saw the ocean for the first time back on K1229. He’d seen pictures of it before that, in picture books he’d read when he was very young, back during the years where his parents had actually bothered to buy him things to read every once in a while. He’d probably thought it looked beautiful at the time, emerald and glistening in the sun and shimmering with waves (not that he’d been hard to please at the time. The insides of the station were so dull and lifeless that anything not colored gray and not made of metal probably counted as beautiful to three year old Adam).

Of course, like basically everything else in Adam’s life, the real thing turned out to be a huge disappointment. The book had used words like _pristine_ and _enchanting_ and _teeming with life_. If Adam had written that book, he would have used words like _loud_ and _crowded_ and _not really worth the trip if I’m being entirely honest, Gansey, sorry_.

But standing on the precipice overlooking the slime sea, Adam thinks he understands, a little bit, what the book had been trying to tell him. Maybe there was something in the water or the FFR star that made the surface glisten, just a little more. Maybe it was the fact that there wasn’t _a bunch of screaming three year olds_ or _an asshole playing music on speakers turned up to max volume right next to him_. Either way, he remembers better, now, how his three year old self had felt. He stands at the edge, looks down at the endless expanse of shimmering blue water, lets the wind flow through his air, the roar of the waves fill his one good ear.

He turns around and is immediately knocked onto his back by a strong spray of water.

Ronan looks down from above him, his nozzle dripping wet. Adam’s not sure what his face looks like right now, but however it looks, Ronan clearly doesn’t like it, because his expression fixes itself into a scowl.

“Damn it,” he says. “That always works on Declan.”

Adam sighs, not bothering to move from his position on the ground, dangerously close to the edge of the cliff.

“Ronan,” Adam asks from his position on the ground. Ronan grunts at him from above. “Why am I wet?”

“I sprayed you with water,” Ronan responds, matter-of-factly.

“I can see that,” says Adam. “Why did you spray me with water?”

“I wanted to see what kind of face I could get you to make,” says Ronan. He frowns. “Your face didn’t really change though.”

Adam sighs, and lets his hands fall to the floor around him, rolls his face lazily to face the sea again. For a moment, he stays completely still, watches the sparkling reflections on the water, feels the breeze pass over his sprawled out body, breathes in the salty air, and gathers his thoughts.

“Ronan,” he starts.

Ronan looks at him. “S’up?” he says, casual.

Adam cranes his neck upwards to look directly into his pale blue eyes. “You are the single most annoying person I have ever met in my entire life,” he says.

To Ronan’s eternal credit, he doesn’t so much as blink. “You sound like my older brother,” he says, before he bursts into laughter again, wild and unrestrained in ways Adam had never let himself feel before.

At least, not before now, he hasn't.

“Quick question,” he says. Ronan pauses his laughter to look back down at him. Adam reaches out with his arm to grab his vacpack and lifts the nozzle, leveling it straight at Ronan’s face. “For no reason in particular,” he says, “which one of these buttons is for shooting water at people?”

Ronan grins savagely at him.

* * *

They’d somehow managed to drag their thoroughly soaked and laughing bodies back to the forest area with the chickens when Adam spots it. Nestled underneath a grove of the multicolored trees were the most beautiful creatures he’d ever seen in his life. Their entire bodies shimmered like stained glass in a cathedral, including the perfect, symmetrical flowers that topped their heads. Glowing lights danced around the corral, flickering in color and intensity as they float up and down lazily. Adam slowly approaches the corral, gently holding his hand out as one of the twinkling lights drifted downwards towards him.

He’s broken out of his trance by the feeling of two muscular arms wrapping themselves firmly around his waist and violently wrenching him to the ground and _away from the explosion as another one of the lights touches the ground where Adam had been standing just moments before._

“Jesus fuck, Parrish,” Ronan’s voice comes from above him, their faces alarmingly close to touching. “You can’t just go around fucking touching things without knowing anything about them.”

“Sorry,” Adam’s feels his heart pound from inside his chest. He quickly tries to convince himself that it's because of the fact that he'd nearly been blown up. It doesn't work. “They were just - they looked so beautiful.”

“Just because something’s fucking beautiful doesn’t mean you get to go touch it however you want,” he says. Then, with a jolt, he immediately releases his grip on Adam and jerks his hands back like he’d been burned, his ears red again.

Adam tries not to feel disappointed at the loss of contact. He fails miserably.

* * *

“Sorry,” Adam repeats after they returned to the ranch house. They were still wet from their impromptu water gun fight from earlier, so when they had fallen, they’d both ended up covered in mud, which they’d tracked into the house when they’d gone inside to shower and change clothes. He can see the boot prints he’d left on the front entryway of Ronan’s house. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to –“

Ronan flicks him on the forehead. “How many times do I have to tell you to stop doing that thing with your face?” he says.

* * *

Looking back, his first mistake had been his decision to set his alarm to wake him at dawn for his first _real day_ on the job (he retroactively decided that the day before didn’t count as his first day, because if it did, he’d have to admit to Gansey that on his first day of work he’d insulted Ronan’s home and profession, got his face insulted back, hosed his boss with water, and then nearly gotten them both killed in an explosion).

If he’d been thinking clearly, he would have remembered the _last time_ he’d thought it would be a good idea to get out of bed and attempt to function before nine in the morning, an 8:00 a.m. _Exoplanet Geology_ class that had nearly ended in death by simultaneous heart attack, stroke, and caffeine overdose. Unfortunately his thoughts were filled with other, more pressing matters, like the echoing of Ronan’s laughter, the way his tattoo curled around his shoulders, and the shape of his biceps.

So, obviously, things started to go wrong pretty much the moment he set foot outside.

He’d found the mechanical bird ( _”her name is Chainsaw,”_ Ronan had said) sitting on her perch, completely immobile. He’d initially thought that she was just conserving energy while she didn’t have any work to do, but the vegetables he’d seen her harvest yesterday were ripe for the picking, and she wasn’t moving at all. He’d popped the cover off of her perch and tinkered a bit with the circuitry, but Chainsaw was a newer model that he was unfamiliar with, and she’d clearly been modified by someone who had no clue what the words ‘industry standard’ meant, and he couldn’t even find the power source, and it was getting more and more difficult to concentrate because the stupid Ranch Exchange in the center of the main farm area _wouldn’t stop ringing_.

Adam sighs as the screen lights up for the umpteenth time that hour. Whoever’s been calling Ronan clearly wasn’t going to give up any time soon. The ringtone Ronan had chosen (some truly horrifying dubstep/electronica mashup song about _squash_ of all things) certainly wasn’t helping. So it wasn’t entirely Adam’s fault that he gave up completely when the _EDM psychological torture_ started again, making him jump and hit his head on the opening to Chainsaw’s perch. It’s not as if he had been _explicitly forbidden_ from taking Ronan’s calls, and anyway, Ronan seems to like it when he does rude things, so he might as well.

“Ronan Niall Lynch!” he’d scarcely hit the button to accept the call before the girl on the other end of the screen started screaming at him. “I swear to _fucking god_ , if you don’t send me those fucking Cuberries, _I’ll tan your hide and turn your skin into -_ ” she stopped abruptly upon seeing Adam at the terminal. Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not Lynch.”

“No, I’m Adam,” Adam responds. If he were having a good day, he probably could have come up with a more intelligent response, but his head hurts, he’s jet lagged, and it’s, like, seven in the morning.

“I’m Blue,” the woman – Blue – responds.

“Ok,” says Adam. For a moment, the two of them stare at each other in silence.

“So why exactly are you answering Lynch’s calls for him? Because if you’re robbing him, all of his valuable stuff is in the silos next to the plort market,” she says, pointing.

“Why does everyone assume I’m robbing Ronan?” asks Adam.

Blue gestures to the ranch around him. “Have you seen his shit? Who _wouldn’t_ try to rob him?”

“I’m not robbing him,” Adam says, “I’m his farmhand.”

“You’re _working for Lynch?_ ” she asks emphatically. Adam nods, feeling less worried than he probably should be about the horrified expression on Blue’s face. “Did you get rejected by the space janitors or something?”

“I never heard back,” he says truthfully. Pauses thoughtfully for a second. “You wouldn’t happen to know how those weird birds on Ronan’s ranch work, do you?”

“Oh, are you going to fuck with the controls on his drones?” she asks, looking much more intrigued than she had been moments before. “You should set them to throw Hen-Hen’s into his crystal slime corral, he’ll never be able to get them all out, and he _hates_ the noises they make, it’ll be _hilarious -_ ”

“Actually,” Adam interrupts, “One of his drones broke. I’m trying to fix it.”

“Oh,” she says, looking significantly less excited now. “What’s wrong with it?”

“It stopped moving,” he responds. She gives him a look.

“It…stopped moving?” she asks. Adam nods. She stares at him silently, for a moment, before she continues, speaking slowly. “...Did you fill its tank back up with water?”

Adam blinks. “Why would I do that?”

Blue’s facial expression morphs into something indescribable. At least, Adam’s sleep addled mind lacks the vocabulary for it, and he doesn’t even have time to try to come up with the proper word because Ronan chooses exactly that moment to appear, clothes rumpled from sleep, yawning lazily.

He dutifully ignores the way the sight makes his insides feel slightly weightless.

“Sargent, why the fuck are you calling me at –“ he pauses to look at the clock on his terminal, “- 7:30 in the morning?”

Blue’s face remains frozen in the same expression from before. Now that Adam has had some time to think, he’d describe it as somewhere between _horrified_ and _exasperated_. “Ronan,” she asks, “where the hell did you hire this guy from?”

Ronan shrugs. “The internet?” he offers. Blue sighs heavily, looking extremely put upon.

“Ronan,” she says, “you realize we’re going to go exploring the slime ruins in a couple weeks with those history guys, right?

Ronan nods. “Yeah? And?”

“So while you’re doing that, this guy’s going to watch your ranch, right?”

Ronan nods again. “Yeah, sounds right,” he says.

“Ronan,” says Blue, now definitely sounding exasperated, “this guy doesn’t even know how _drones work,_ you can’t just leave him in charge of your entire ranch!”

“Oh,” Ronan responds. He turns to Adam. “You fill them with water, and then they’ll do shit,” he says to Adam.

“Ok,” Adam responds. He _really_ should say something in his own defense before Blue assumes he _entirely lacks brain cells,_ but his logical thought processes apparently have a strict policy of refusing to work before 8:00 a.m.

It doesn’t help that he’s currently _very distracted_ by Ronan’s bare shoulders.

Blue lets her head fall onto the terminal in front of her. “This was a terrible idea,” she says. 

Ronan makes an _eh_ gesture with his hands. “What else is new,” he asks, nonchalant.

Blue sighs. “You know what,” she says, sounding resigned, “you’re probably rich enough to survive having your whole ranch burned down. I’m just going to go before this _actually_ turns into a train wreck.”

Ronan yawns. “Yeah ok,” he says, “whatever the fuck you say.”

“Send me those damn Cuberries,” she says, and then hangs up on them.

Ronan yawns again, stretching his arms high above his head, the movement lifting his shirt up and exposing the tiniest bit of his pale midriff for Adam to see –

And, just like that, Adam’s brain starts working again.

“Wait,” he says. Ronan turns to look at him. “You’re going to _leave me alone in charge of your entire ranch_?”

“Yep,” said Ronan, looking entirely unconcerned.

“Ronan,” he says, alarmed. “I don’t know anything about slime ranching.”

Ronan looks at him. “So?”

“Did you not just hear? _I could burn your whole ranch down_.”

“Oh,” Ronan says through a yawn, still looking much less concerned with the fact that he’d admitted to leaving his entire livelihood in the hands of someone with _literally no experience whatsoever_ than he really should be. He pauses a moment. Turns his head to look around at the clearing in front of the house. Turns back to Adam. He shrugs. “Apparently I’m rich enough to survive that,” he says, gesturing to the terminal screen where Blue’s face had been.

“Ronan,” says Adam, now on the verge of panic, “I’m _serious_ -”

“Jesus fuck, _chill_.” he says, rolling his eyes. He holds the vacpack from yesterday out to Adam in offering. “It’s easy,” he says. “I’ll show you.”

* * *

“So...how was your first day of work?” Gansey asks hesitantly, his voice tinny and distorted through the admittedly cheap speakers of Adam’s terminal.

Adam can’t blame him for his apprehension. He must look like shit. He’s completely drenched in sweat, his face is caked in dirt, his hair feels like it had been filled with twigs and grime, he’d managed to tear a huge hole through his favorite work shirt (a sad attempt to manually harvest a plort from the crystal slimes before Ronan told him about the automatic plort collector), and one of his pant legs had been half singed off thanks to a mishap with a fire slime. His first day on the job couldn’t have possibly gone any worse, and it was the _most fucking fun he’d ever had in his nineteen years of living,_ and it was all _Ronan Goddamn Lynch’s fault._

“Work was…ok,” he says, settling into his chair, trying not to wince when the cuts on his arm rubbed against the leather. “It’s a job.”

“...I see,” says Gansey, his face fixed into its _you look like death but I’m too polite to say that out loud_ expression that he likes to use when Adam pulls all-nighters. “How is – how is your boss?” he asks, and, god, Adam wishes he hadn’t asked that because now Adam’s thinking about Ronan, and thinking about Ronan means thinking about _Ronan whooping and hollering with joy as they jet packed across cliffs and over open ocean,_ about _Ronan laughing, clear and melodic, at Adam flailing wildly and falling into the brush,_ about _Ronan grinning, the smooth baritone of his voice teasing, saying “you’ll live” as he cleaned the cut on Adam’s arm, his work-worn hands surprisingly gentle -_

“He’s fine, I guess,” Adam responds.

“Well, at least he wasn’t actually a body-snatcher,” Gansey hums. “And the work as well? Is it suitable for a summer semester?”

“Yeah, it should be fine,” Adam responds, quietly shifting his body to try to hide the _massive hole in his shirt_. “It wasn’t anything too difficult.”

“I’ve heard working as a slime rancher requires a fair bit of strength,” Gansey comments, offhandedly, as if his statement hadn’t just reminded Adam of Ronan’s _arms_ and _shoulders_ and _back_.

“I’m no stranger to manual labor, Gansey,” he says, probably a little bit more defensively than strictly necessary. “Honestly, my biggest problem is my…unfamiliarity with slime ranching.”

“Oh,” Gansey responds, settling back into his usual, regal demeanor. “Well, that will change soon, I’m sure. You’ve always been a natural born learner.”

Adam just keeps his teeth pressed together. He knows better than to disagree out loud when Gansey offers him unwarranted praise. “I’m sure I’ll manage,” he says instead. “Ronan has been…teaching me.”

“His method of teaching must be quite –“ he eyes Adam’s disheveled appearance, “- unorthodox.”

“It is certainly unique,” Adam says. He tries to imagine what it would be like to have a professor like Ronan. It would end in several lawsuits, probably.

His arms would look great in a button down, though.

“And what about your living quarters?” Gansey continues. Adam’s eyes snap back up. “I can’t really tell what your room looks like through your camera, is it big enough for you?”

“I-” Adam looks around the room he’s in. It’s far bigger and nicer than the college dorm room they share. “It’s fine, I guess –“

“How about food? What has he been feeding you?” Gansey interrupts him.

“Food?” Adam asks, bewildered. He and Ronan had cooked dinner together, and while calling the resulting food _good_ would be somewhat generous, there was something about standing side by side with Ronan in his kitchen while he cut vegetables and needled Adam for being unable to cook that had made his heart ache and his head spin. “It was…edible -”

“And the connection there?” Gansey presses onwards. “I’ve heard planets with relatively low population counts can have spotty connections. Can you still access your starmail?”

“I - Gansey, I’m in a _video call_ with you, I obviously have connection -”

“What about your clothes?” Gansey asks. “Is there a place for you to do your laundry up there –“

“Gansey, are you just going to interrogate me for this entire call?” he snaps before he can come up with some crazy fantasy of doing laundry together with Ronan, standing side by side while they hang their clothes up to dry and the fragrant winds blows through his hair and they’re laughing and Ronan turns to him and their eyes meet and Ronan’s shirtless because it’s laundry day and _god damn it_.

Gansey stops. “I’m sorry, Adam. I’m really not trying to be intrusive,” he says, looking apologetic. “I’m just – I’m worried, you know, I get –“ he stops himself, looking at Adam in that helplessly earnest way that only Gansey can pull off. “You would tell me if you needed help, right?” he asks.

Adam hesitates. “I would,” he says, through his teeth. For a moment, he and Gansey just look at each other through their screens, Gansey’s eyes quietly searching.

Adam clears his throat softly. “How’s your mother?” he asks, shifting the subject.

* * *

Running a slime ranch, Adam quickly learns, is as much about time management and planning as it is about elbow grease and manual labor, which is a good thing for Adam Parrish, who has been micromanaging his schedule since before he could read, probably. He reads and annotates the _Slimepedia_ , cover to cover. He keeps careful track of every single plort he harvests per day, divided by type and location harvested from so he can make comparisons of day-to-day production. He partitions the farm into distinct sections and orders them by proximity to the ranch house to make a more efficient walking route. He makes note of how long the drones can run without having their tanks refilled and develops a schedule to ensure that they all remain constantly active. He takes inventory to see which fruits and vegetables tend to overproduce, adjusts the auto-feeders accordingly, and incinerates the surplus for the fire slimes. He has a spreadsheet with every single drill and pump and apiary on the farm in it, so that he knows when to harvest them and replace them and which plorts to put back into the refinery to rebuild them.

Ronan, meanwhile, keeps himself busy by lying flat on his back and bouncing a pink slime repeatedly against the cliff face.

“Should you really be doing that to a slime,” Adam finally asks, after watching Ronan sprawled out on the ground, lazily batting the slime against the wall for a solid two hours of the world’s most depressing volleyball game. He’d thought it was kind of cute at first, but - ok, well, he still finds it cute, but judging by the amount of pink matter currently splattered against the cliff face, he needs to put a stop to this soon, or there won’t be much of that poor slime left.

Ronan sighs and let his hand fall back down to the ground. The slime starts to bounce away, looking completely unbothered by the fact that it had just spent a solid couple hours getting slammed repeatedly into the side of a cliff. Without even looking, Ronan grabs his vacpack and sucks the slime inside.

“I’m fucking bored,” he says. He makes a movement like he’s trying to sink even further into the ground beneath him, flailing his limbs sadly like an impression of a dying starfish.

“I can tell,” says Adam. Ronan turns his head to glare at him.

“I’m fucking bored,” he repeats, at Adam this time, “and it’s all your fucking fault.”

“My fault?” asks Adam.

“There’s nothing to do around here anymore,” says Ronan. “Because you do everything already.”

Adam represses his knee-jerk reaction to offer to _do his job less good_ , because he’s _Adam Parrish_ and that’s _not an option for him_ , and he’s learned from experience that Ronan will just accuse him of making _The Face™_ , and then it’ll turn into a water fight or a game of keep away or something equally ridiculous that will no doubt make Adam’s chest ache and head spin and keep him up late into the night, and he doesn’t have time for that. He has a ranch to run now, apparently.

“Well, you’ve only got -” Adam pauses to check the date on the terminal screen of the Ranch Exchange, “- about another week before you go exploring the ruins again. Then you’ll have something to do.”

Ronan groans again. “I don’t want to go to the ruins either,” he whines.

“Then don’t go.”

“I have to,” he whines more. 

“Why do you have to?”

“Because I said I would,” Ronan pouts in a way that is bound to send Adam to an early grave.

“Just say you won’t, then.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I already said I was going,” Ronan says, “so if I say I’m not anymore, then that would be _lying_.”

Adam blinks. “Ok?”

“I don’t tell lies, Parrish,” Ronan says, more defensively than he really needs to be. “I’m not a liar.”

“Ok,” responds Adam. “Can you please sulk in a way that won’t cause physical harm to another living being?”

Ronan rolls his eyes. “The slime is fine, Parrish,” he says, “these things have survived entire slimeball tournaments before.”

“Slimeball?” asks Adam, before he realises what a _horrible mistake_ it is to indulge Ronan while he’s bored and desperate.

Ronan’s eyes light up, and he jerks his head to look back at Adam. “You don’t know what slimeball is,” he says, and Adam can already feel his sanity slipping away from him.

* * *

“The rules are simple,” says Ronan, gently tossing the slime up and down as he speaks, and Adam really shouldn’t be doing this. He’s already a solid half an hour behind his carefully crafted drone watering schedule, the apiary in the Overgrowth needs to be harvested and replaced, and the fire slimes by the docks need to be fed soon, but Ronan had rolled his sleeves up, exposing the skin of his bare shoulders framed in between the slightest hint of the ink black tattoo across his back, and Adam _caved_ and resigned himself to an early death.

“If I get this slime into that hoop, I get a point,” continues Ronan, completely oblivious to Adam’s internal meltdown. “If you get the slime into that hoop, you get a point.”

“Ok,” says Adam, shifting his gaze away from Ronan’s biceps to look at where his finger was pointing. “Ok,” he repeats, “I think I get it.”

Ronan nods. “The first person to ten points wins,” he says, and then they start.

He picks up the flow of the game fairly quickly: it’s not that complicated to begin with, and Adam had played a similar game growing up in his school gym class. Ronan still pulls into the lead, obviously. He’s taller, and more athletically built, and has years worth of experience with the game. Still, Adam can’t say that he’s not having _fun_. Sure, he’s losing, and he’s always hated sports, and it’s way too hot outside to be doing something like this, but the game _is_ admittedly entertaining, and Ronan’s smiling, and his shirt keeps riding up, and there was something undeniably and viscerally attractive about the way he’d nearly jumped _clear over Adam and slammed the ball straight into the hoop_ , so it’s not like Adam’s not having fun or anything.

But then, after Ronan’s scored again and it’s Adam’s turn to start off with the slime, Ronan shifts his weight, subtly and unintentionally, his hand coming up to wipe the sweat from his brow, the sunlight glistening against his pale, porcelain skin, like a candid of an ancient Greek deity, his hip jutting out just slightly, enough so that the black skinny jeans he’s wearing form exactly the right shape around his legs, wrap perfectly around his thighs, curl _just right_ around his marvelous, incredible, beautiful, shapely -

Adam trips over his own feet and faceplants into the dirt.

Ronan laughs at him, of course. It’s a really attractive laugh attached to a really, _really_ attractive person, but Adam wishes he could hear it in a context where he _doesn’t look like a complete and utter fool._

“Are you okay? You’ve been down there for a while,” Ronan’s head appears above him, the sun in the sky framing his head like a halo. He lifts his shirt to wipe away the sweat accumulating on his neck, exposing his toned midriff in the process. His skin glistens in the light, burning the image deep into the back of Adam’s mind, where it will no doubt haunt his dreams.

Adam sighs. This is exactly what he had been trying to avoid.

“Just peachy,” he responds, and then before he has time to so much as react, he’s on his feet again, blinking rapidly in surprise, because Ronan had reached down to grab his arm and pulled him to his feet effortlessly, in an instant, in one fluid motion, and with _only one hand, holy shit, how strong is he -_

“What was the score again?” asks Ronan. Adam supresses the urge to groan. The one time he stays in a place with an actual working water heater and _he has to take cold showers anyway._ He spends the rest of the game pondering the inherent injustices of his existence. He loses miserably.

(And afterwards, if he stays in the shower just a little longer than he normally does, that’s no one’s business but his own.)

* * *

Years of constant work as a mechanic had left his palms rough. All the wrench turning and gear shifting and lever pulling worked blistered into his hands, blisters that he’d worked into scars, scars that he’d worked into calluses. But working on a slime ranch was an entirely different beast. He spent nearly ten hours a day with a firm grip on the nozzle of an industrial strength vacuum, and it was no longer possible to ignore reality.

His hands were _burning._

The sad part is that Ronan had probably noticed before he himself had. Adam had caught Ronan staring at his hands a couple times while he had been giving his evening report of the ranches affairs for the day, an unofficial tradition of their dinner times that had formed after Ronan began to leave to go explore the ancient slime ruins ( _”they were boring and stupid”_ , according to Ronan, but Ronan probably found everything that didn’t involve high risk of bodily harm to be boring). Still, he hadn’t expected Ronan to do anything about it.

He certainly wasn’t expecting anything like _this_.

“Here,” Ronan pulled a small tube out of one of his pockets and placed it down on the table in front of Adam, “I found this while I was out exploring. You can have it, or whatever.”

Adam blinks.

“You found luxury brand hand lotion while you were out exploring the ruins of an ancient slime worshipping civilization?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you didn’t lie,” Adam snorted.

“I didn’t fucking lie. I specifically had it delivered to the ancient ruins so I could say that without lying,” Ronan said, face completely deadpan. Adam couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not.

He sighed. “Ronan, I - I can’t accept this.”

“Why not?”

“Because - because,” he struggled, trying to think of an answer that wouldn’t make him sound like an asshole. “Look, I appreciate the gesture, but I can’t accept gifts like this.”

“Why not?”

“Because - just - because!” he was starting to get genuinely flustered. How was he supposed to explain it? _Because he didn’t have anything to give back and it would make him feel like he owed Ronan and he couldn’t have that? Because it would destroy his sense of independence and self-sufficiency and he had built his entire sense of self-worth on that? Because this had never happened before and he didn’t know how to accept gifts from pretty boys without his heart feeling like it wants to explode?_

Ronan just roll his eyes. “Ok, fine, I’ll take it out of your paycheck then.”

Adam eyes snap up to glare at Ronan, jolting him out of his thoughts. “Excuse you, you can’t just buy things and then take them out of my paycheck without asking me first!”

“Ok, then I _won’t_ take it out of your paycheck.”

“I just told you, I don’t need gifts like that!”

Ronan throws his hands up in frustration. “Then what the fuck am I supposed to do?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Adam responds, equally annoyed. “Just use it yourself, you bought it. You probably need it more than me, anyway.”

“Hey, fuck you, my hands are as smooth and soft as a baby’s asscheeks,” which, Adam knows that isn’t true, but he can’t _say_ that it isn’t without _also_ admitting that he’d spent a solid fifteen minutes the other day carefully studying the calluses on Ronan’s palms.

“Why can’t you just keep it for yourself or something?”

“Why can’t _you_ just fucking take it?” Ronan groans. “God damnit, why is this such a fucking problem for you? I should have just snuck into your room and left it there without saying anything -”

“Like I need some hooligan to come breaking into my room” he says, trying to keep from blushing at the thought of Ronan doing that. “Why would you even get me this stuff anyway?”

“Because your hands are fucking hurt, idiot! How were you going to keep working with hurting hands?”

“Maybe you can’t, but I manage just fine,” Adam retorts. “How did you even know that my hands were hurt anyway?”

“Because your hands are pretty so I fucking like to watch them while you work. Why didn’t you tell me -” Ronan cuts himself off. It took a moment for his words to properly register in Adam’s brain. He turns to stare at Ronan’s face.

“You like to do what?” Adam asks quietly. Ronan stares back at him. His gaze flicks downward to where Adam’s hands are resting in his lap, and for a split second, Adam sees - _something_ \- flash through his eyes. Then, as quickly as it comes, it disappears, Ronan rearranging his face back into a scowl.

“You know what? Fuck this, I’m out of here,” he throws the tube of moisturizer down onto the table and turned to walk into his room, muttering under his breath. Adam watches him leave, too distracted to even go through his daily ritual of _looking at Ronan’s ass through his jeans and feeling mildly bad about it._

Gently, he picks the tube up from where it lay on the table. The words “Manibus Crème Régénéré” stare back at him, along with the frayed remains of what was clearly a hastily removed price sticker. Rolling his eyes, Adam uncaps the tube and tentatively drags his finger across the top of it, gathering a small dollop of the creamy, fragrant substance and spreading it across his hand. Immediately, the burning sensation he’d been feeling for days begins to subside.

He places the tube on the sink counter, next to the cup with his toothbrush.

* * *

He dreams he’s on the asteroid mining station again.

“No,” he says, before his father has a chance to speak. “No! I have nothing to say to you. Nothing.”

“Stupid boy,” his father says.

“That insult doesn’t even make sense,” Adam protests hotly. “I _lived_ with you, I know you can barely read, how do you get off calling _me_ the stupid one?”

His father’s eyes narrow. “Only a fool would accept a gift so unwarranted,” he says simply. 

Adam glares back. “I earned it.”

“How?”

“I -” Adam pauses, at a loss. “Whatever. I’ll just - have Ronan take it out of my paycheck.”

“And how, precisely, do you suppose you have earned the luxury to do _that_?”

“Do _what?_ ”

“Waste money on exorbitant _junk_ ,” his father spits at him.

“I - I needed it,” Adam admits with a wince. “My hands were hurting -”

“You ‘needed’ it,” his father scoffs. “Your weakness, your ineptitude, your human folly _necessitated_ it. You were so useless and pathetic that your _employer_ took pity on you.”

“He didn’t -” Adam sputters, the word _pity_ lodging itself into his chest like a dagger. “I wasn’t -”

“Is this how you intend to live your life, boy? Drifting by on the charity of others?”

“I have never once - _drifted_ ,” Adam spits. “ _You_ made sure of that.”

“And _this_ is how you repay me my kindness? My generosity?”

“I - you -” Adam wants to cry. To scream. To laugh. _Generosity_. “In what world is that _generous_?”

“It was a gift, boy,” says his father. “The one you _really_ deserved. Will you not accept it?”

“I -” he stutters, “- no! I won’t! I don’t want your shitty gifts! I don’t _need_ your shitty gifts! I’m different now! I’m better than that!”

His father laughs, cruel. “Stupid boy,” he says, shaking his head dismissively. “You know my rules. ‘Matter is neither created nor destroyed’. You cannot forge yourself into something out of nothing.” He leans closer to Adam, exposing him to his stale old body odor, the smell of alcohol on his breath. “All that time, all that effort, all that _work_ , all for _nothing_. You’ll only ever be what you always have been: a drain on everyone around you.”

“Shut up!” says Adam.

“You’re a leech -”

“I don’t have to listen to this -”

“- a parasite -”

“Lalalalalalala -” Adam covers his ears with his hands, “- I’m not listening -”

“- vermin, a gnat, a tick, a flea, a wretch upon society, a behemoth Neebray feeding on the birthplace of solar systems, a black hole consuming a star, a speck of antimatter obliterating whomsoever it comes into contact with, dust, dust, _dust_ -”

He jerks awake, his body turned, his legs dangling precariously off the side of his bed.

He scrambles out of bed and into the bathroom. He fumbles around half blind, his eyes unadjusted to the dark surrounding him, until he manges to grab the hand lotion off of it’s place on the counter.

“I deserve this,” he says desperately, pressing the tube forcefully into his hands, it’s hard edges cutting into his still sensitive skin. A teardrop falls onto its lid. He wipes it away. His palms burn again. “I deserve this,” he says.

* * *

“Ronan!” Adam hears a voice yell from behind him. He turns around and suddenly finds himself face to face with a bouncing, curly haired boy, one who’s _hugging him very tightly_ and who _Adam has never seen before in his life._.

“Um,” Adam says intelligently, his hands stuck to his side by the arms currently wrapped around his torso.

“Wow,” the stranger says after he thankfully releases Adam and backs up a step, “either you got shorter and grew hair or you’re not Ronan.”

“I am not Ronan,” Adam says, still entirely lost, “I am Ronan’s farmhand.”

“Wooooaahh,” the stranger reacts as if he’d revealed something incredible instead of just _verbatim stated his occupation_ , “how’d you get Ronan to hire you?”

“I…starmailed him?” Adam responds. This somehow only makes the stranger _more incredulous._

“You got Ronan to _respond on starmail?_ ” he says, like it’s a miracle, which Adam admits it probably is. “Wow, how’d you do that? Declan’s been trying for, like, our whole lives –“

“Matthew,” Ronan calls from the porch, “quit harassing my employee.”

“Ronan!” the stranger – Matthew – yells, and then he’s off, running to the porch, and tackles Ronan into a hug. Ronan smiles, his eyes alight with laughter, and he brings his arms around Matthew, gently wrapping his arms around him in tender response.

You know. Not that Adam was looking, or anything.

So what if Ronan had a boyfriend the entire time? It’s not like Adam cares. He doesn’t. It’s none of his business anyway. He’s just Ronan’s farmhand, after all. He has things to do. A ranch to run. He certainly doesn’t have time for heartbreak. Not that his heart is broken. It’s not. He’s fine. It’s fine. He turns back to the plort collector he’d been emptying out, ignoring the boiling, sick feeling in his stomach.

Ronan joins him, quietly emptying out the corral next to him. “Matthew’s joining us today,” he says, his face fixed into a small smile, like he’s pleased at the thought.

Not that Adam would know. He’s not looking. He’s pointedly _not_ looking at Ronan.

“Are you not going to the ruins today?” Adam asks quietly.

Ronan pauses. “No,” he says, sounding slightly more hesitant than before. “I took the day off because Matthew was coming back.”

“I see,” responds Adam. He carefully finishes pulling the plorts out of the collector and snaps the handle back into place, a little too forcefully, and starts making his way to the silo to deposit them. He makes a note to himself to be more careful with his gear. He does _not_ look at Ronan.

“What’s got you in a pissy mood?” Ronan asks, from behind him. He must be following Adam, judging by the sound of his footsteps. Not that Adam is going to turn around and look.

“There is nothing remotely ‘pissy’ here,” Adam says, clipped but still courteous. “I’m fine.”

“Really?” he asks.

“Yes,” Adam responds.

Another pause. “Look, I’m - uh - sorry I didn’t tell you Matthew was coming today? I guess? I just -”

“You have nothing -” Adam interrupts “- to apologize for.”

“I don’t?”

“Of course not,” says Adam. “Your relationship is none of my business.”

The footsteps behind him stop. “Relationship?” Ronan asks.

“Yes,” responds Adam.

“Wha-”

“Wait for me!” Matthew yells, running up from behind them. He’d acquired a vacpack in the time he’d been missing, one that, Adam noted, had his name scrawled messily on it. Which made perfect sense. Of course. Why _wouldn’t_ Ronan keep a vacpack around specifically for him. “Can we go see Lady Squiggles-A-Lot?” he asks.

“Yes,” responds Adam, not giving Ronan the chance to speak. “Let’s go see Lady Squiggles-A-Lot.”

* * *

Lady Squiggles-A-Lot is apparently a very specific quantum dervish largo slime that Matthew has been friends with since childhood, which means nothing to Adam. Absolutely nothing. So what if Ronan and Matthew have known each other since childhood. That’s fine. Adam is fine with this. He’s not even a little bit interested. Actually, you know what, he _is_ a little bit interested. In fact, he’s _so_ interested that he’s walking several paces ahead of Ronan because he can’t wait to meet Lady Squiggles-A-Lot. Of course that’s why he’s walking fast. _Why else would he be walking fast._

Unfortunately, Matthew seems to share in Adam’s excitement. Or he’s a fast walker. Either way, he keeps pace with Adam.

He’s also _very chatty_.

“So how long have you been working for Ronan?” he asks, skipping along side Adam. Adam subtly accelerates, trying to pull ahead of Matthew, but his height meant he easily keeps pace, taking long strides over the worn pathway they were walking on.

Not that Adam cares that Matthew _just happens_ to be _taller and more athletic than him._ Of course it doesn’t matter. That’s fine.

“Just since the beginning of the summer,” he responds politely. This is a person his boss is close to, after all. Something, something, building connections for future references, or something. He has to be polite. He’s being _very polite_.

“Oh, a summer job. Are you a college student, then?” asks Matthew, still bubbly.

“Yes,” says Adam. “I’m a sophomore at KU K1229,” he responds. It’s rude to respond to someone without even looking at them. Adam should probably look at Matthew. Adam should definitely look at Matthew. _Adam should really be looking at Matthew when he responds -_ damn it, Adam _can’t_ look at Matthew, because then he won’t be able to see where he’s going, and if he can’t see where he’s going, he would just be _rushing into things blindly and prematurely,_ and he can’t do that, because then he’d do something _stupid_ , like _fall for his stupidly attractive boss, who’s totally out of his league and also already spoken for,_ and he definitely can’t have that. What kind of idiot would do something like that? _Not Adam_ , that’s for sure.

“Wow, the K1229 branch? You must be pretty smart,” says Matthew, and Adam does _not_ feel a sick and twisted tinge of satisfaction at that. But then Matthew smiles, and says “I just got accepted to Herschel myself last month,” because of course he did. Of course Matthew is going to the _one university_ that Adam couldn’t afford to go to because they didn’t offer him financial aid.

“Wow,” says Adam, past his gritted teeth. “You must be pretty smart, too.” He probably got the financial aid from Herschel. Hell, he probably doesn’t even _need_ the financial aid. He’s probably rich. Richer, and smarter, and taller, and more athletic than Adam. Not that Adam’s going to fucking cry about it, or anything. He’s fucking not. This planet is just - fucking dusty as fucking fuck. _Fuck_. He turns away from Matthew to wipe at his eyes.

“Eh, not really,” says Matthew, sounding slightly bashful. “It was probably just legacy admission. Our mom’s an alumni, and our dad donated a lot, so...” he shrugged, letting his voice trail off.

Wait.

“ _Our_ mom?” Adam asks quietly, turning to look at Matthew.

Matthew blinks at him. “Yeah. You know,” he says. “Me and Ronan. Our mom.” He tilts his head to the side innocently in confusion as if he _hadn’t just caused Adam’s brain to simultaneously release every single neurotransmitter it had, all at once_.

“Oh,” says Adam, the tension draining from his body like sludge into a river. “Oh. You’re Ronan’s _brother._ ” He can see the resemblance now that he’s looking, in the angles of his face, the blue of his eyes.

Matthew nods enthusiastically, his head bouncing up and down. “Yeah,” he responds brightly, “and you’re Ronan’s farmhand.”

And just like that Adam’s heart shatters again.

“Yes,” Adam says, quietly. “Yes, I’m his farmhand. That’s right. _Farmhand,_ ” he says, slightly more forcefully than necessary, trying to drill the idea into his own stubborn skull.

Ronan catches up to them, panting slightly. “Why the _fuck_ ,” he pauses to catch his breath, “were you guys walking so _fucking fast_.”

“To see Lady Squiggles-A-Lot, of course,” says Matthew.

* * *

“So,” Ronan wanders up to him as he’s feeding the fire slimes, suspiciously casual. “Matthew tells me you didn’t realise we were siblings.”

Adam briefly considers feeding _himself_ to the fire slimes. “It was a simple misunderstanding,” he says instead, continuing to throw fruit into the incinerator.

Ronan scoffs under his breath. “The fuck did you misunderstand?”

He briefly considers feeding _Ronan_ to the fire slimes. “Not important.”

Ronan quirks his brow. “Is it not?” he asks.

Adam closes his eyes in a silent prayer for strength. “Why would it be important?”

“You seemed pretty upset there for a moment -”

“I did not.”

Ronan badly surpresses a laugh, trying to play it off as a cough. Adam is not amused. “You kind of did -”

“I. Seemed. Fine.” he responds, a little too quickly and a little too snappy to be casual. Ronan looks bemused.

“Sure you did,” he says.

“I did,” says Adam.

“Mm-hm.”

“I _did,_ ” repeats Adam, more insistent this time. “Why does it even matter?”

“No reason,” says Ronan, pretending to casually examine his nails. Adam’s not even close to convinced. He’s _wearing gloves_ , for Christ’s sake.

“You’re over here _harassing me_ for _no reason?_ ” he asks, pausing in his work to fix Ronan with a glare.

Ronan smiles back, looking impossibly smug. “It’s just. You know. It seemed a bit like you were…” he trails off, pretending to curl his hair around his fingers. Adam refrains from pointing out that he _doesn’t even have hair for that_.

“I was _what_?” he responds.

“You know,” says Ronan, sing-songy, making an incredibly vague gesture with his hands.

“I do not ‘know’,” Adam’s not going to make this easy for him. “Spell it out for me.”

“It just seemed like you were - jealous, or something” Ronan finally finishes.

Adam scoffs, a little too loudly and a little too forced, “Of course I wasn’t jealous. There’s no way I would be jealous. Why would I be jealous?”

“Uh-huh,” says Ronan, looking prim and innocent and _unfairly attractive_. “Right.”

Adam draws himself up to his full height. “I wasn’t jealous,” he says firmly.

“Right,” says Ronan, tilting his head down to meet Adam’s unspoken challenge.

“I wasn’t.” 

“Uh-huh.”

“I wasn’t - _stop making that face,_ ” he demands.

“What face,” asks Ronan, still making the face.

Adam points at him accusingly. “You know what face you’re making,” he says.

Ronan raises his eyebrows in challenge. “As you once told me - ‘this is just what my face looks like’,” he says smugly.

Adam forces down the urge to strangle him.

He takes a deep breath before continuing. “Ok, fine,” he says. “There is a slight possibility that I may have, in fact, been, and this is only a possibility, _jealous_ ,” he has to physically claw the last word out from the back of his throat and into his mouth. “So what?”

It’s somehow this, out of everything, that actually gets Ronan to back down. “Fuck,” he says, “ok, well shit, I don’t know.”

Adam rolls his eyes. “What?”

“Hang on - I just - I wasn’t expecting you to actually _admit_ it.” he looks away from Adam, even having the gall to look _slightly embarrassed_. “Give me a second, I need a moment.” He clutches his hand in front of his chest, like a fucking affronted nun.

Adam narrows his eyes, struck by a sudden thought. “What about you?” he asks. “Why are you even interested in whether or not I was jealous?”

Ronan jolts, and turns back to look at him like a kid caught sneaking candy. “I wasn’t,” he says, too quickly and too forcefully.

_Oh,_ thinks Adam, _how the tables have turned._

“Really?” Adam takes a step forward and smirks. “Are you sure?”

To his credit, Ronan meets his gaze, although that might be less _bravery_ , and more _deer caught in headlights_. “Yep,” he says, “I’m sure.”

“Are you _really_ sure?” he asks.

“Really sure,” Ronan nods rapidly. “Why do you ask?”

Adam steps even closer, bringing his face up to eye level with Ronan. He probably looks stupid, standing on his tippy-toes, but it’s more than worth the way Ronan turns pink at the proximity. “Because I get the feeling you may have some -” he leans forward, bringing his face even closer, “- _ulterior motive_ for asking.”

Ronan inhales sharply. “I -”

“Oh, shit -” Matthew’s voice rings out loudly from the other side of the clearing. Adam turns to see him standing next to the _now deactivated corral,_ the slimes bouncing away from him and _straight towards the cliff above the ocean,_ because apparently Ronan thought it would be a good idea to put the _teleporting slimes that summon tornados next to the fucking ocean_.

“Matthew,” Ronan yells, directly into his good ear, “you are my favorite fucking sibling on the planet.”

“Declan’s not even here right now,” Matthew yells back, uselessly standing by while the slimes bounce right past him. “You don’t have any other siblings on the planet.”

Adam sighs, and starts running towards the slimes.

* * *

“Sorry about all that,” Matthew says while Adam throws another slime back into the corral. Ronan had gone off to chase the ones that had fled into the Overgrowth before they _”ate all of his fucking fruits and vegetables.”_ Matthew, for his part, abandoned his vacpack completely, instead opting to cradle one of the largos directly in his arms. “I probably made a lot of trouble for you, huh?”

He turns to look at Matthew, his blue eyes twisted into such a sincerely apologetic facial expression that Adam feels guilty for even _thinking_ rude things about him. He almost wants to apologize himself.

“It’s fine,” he says instead. He smiles. “Is this Lady Squiggles-A-Lot?” he asks.

Matthews face brightens. “Yeah,” he says, holding the slime up to Adam. The slime jiggles happily in his embrace, it's body wiggling with the motion. “Do you want to hold her?”

Adam laughs. “No, that’s ok,” he says. “She seems very...squiggly. I wouldn’t want to drop her, you know? She might get free, and who knows how much trouble that would cause,” he says, his lips still quirked up in a smile.

“Yeah, that would be awful,” Matthew agrees, and then breaks, bursting out into laughter. It’s easy to see the resemblance now. Matthew laughs exactly like Ronan: wild, and carefree, and full of life.

It must be a Lynch thing, then.

(“You want to know a secret,” Ronan asks him after he’d gotten the slimes back into the corral and Matthew had run off to go play with the Hen-Hens. His lips quirked up just a smidge, like he’d seen something funny but was trying not to smile.

Adam sighs, exhausted, because of course the world wasn’t done torturing him for the day. “Sure,” he responds.

Ronan points to one of the slimes on the other side of the corral. “ _That’s_ Lady Squiggles-A-Lot,” Ronan says, “not that one,” he points back to the slime Matthew had been holding. 

Adam looks at them. “You’re lying,” he concludes.

“The fuck?” responds Ronan.

“There’s no way you can tell the difference,” says Adam, gesturing at the corral with his hands. “They look the exact same.”

“There are differences.”

Adam gestures to the corral with his hands. “Where?” he asks.

“Simple. Lady Squiggles-A-Lot is the _extra squiggly one_. Fucking duh,” says Ronan.

“They’re _slimes_ ,” says Adam, throwing his hands up. “They’re _all_ squiggly.”

“They’re not _all_ squiggly. Some of them are _wiggly_ , and some of them are _jiggly_.”

“Those words mean _literally nothing_ ,” says Adam, deadpan.

“Come on, Parrish, just because you can’t see the difference doesn’t mean they’re all the same. It just means that you aren’t a _slime aficionado_ like myself -”

“Oh, _shut up_ ,” snaps Adam, “you are _so full of shit_.”

And even though it’s late, and even though he’s tired from chasing around the runaway slimes, and even though he still has to make a new pump for the grotto and give his report for the day and fill out the plort collection data, and even though Adam’s heart still aches from the _emotional roller coaster_ he’d been thrown on earlier, Ronan snickers, quietly, under his breath so Matthew won’t overhear, and Adam smiles, despite himself, can feel his heart soar at just the sound -

Maybe it is just a Ronan thing, after all.)

* * *

He wakes up in the middle of the night to Ronan shaking him by the shoulders.

“Hey,” Ronan says after he opens his eyes. He’s carrying a blanket in one hand and his vacpack in the other. He looks wide awake despite the hour, his eyes gleaming in the darkness.

“Mrghrlblrb?” says Adam.

“Come on,” says Ronan. “I want to show you something.”

* * *

He finds himself following Ronan out into the ranch at _ass’o’clock at night._

“Where, exactly, are we going again?” he asks.

“Just follow me,” says Ronan.

“Ok but, like, where am I following you to?”

“You’ll see when we get there.”

“Oh, good, that’s _exactly_ what I want to hear from the person who kidnapped me out of my bed in the middle of the night to go for a walk. What, you can’t, like, tell me now, or -”

“Parrish.”

“- is this a prank or something? Are you going to prank me? Because this is a really obvious set up for a prank, honestly, I expected better from you. Unless -”

“Parrish.”

“- are you actually going to murder me? Because my friend Gansey knows I’m supposed to be here, and if I don’t return his calls within, like, an hour, he’s _definitely_ going to call the police -”

“ _Adam_ ,” Ronan turns and grabs his arm, interrupting his rambling. He fixes his surprisingly intense gaze onto Adam, his blue eyes glittering under the starlight. “Just trust me,” he says, almost pleading.

Adam pauses for a moment, stunned. “Ok,” he says. Slowly, Ronan turns around and continues walking. He keeps his grip on Adam’s arm.

* * *

They end up in the Grotto.

Ronan rushes ahead of him to the center of the cave and unrolls the blanket onto the floor. He looks at Adam and makes a patting motion, as if to say “ _come sit here_ ”. Then, before Adam has a chance to so much as take a step towards the blanket, he runs back behind and Adam and starts flipping switches near the entrance of the cave, killing the lights.

Adam hears footsteps running past him. “Fucking come on,” Ronan’s voice comes from the inside of the cave. Adam rolls his eyes, though he doubts Ronan can see.

“Ronan, I can’t see anything,” he says.

“So?”

“So if I try to walk to where you are, I’m going to trip over something,” he responds, exasperated.

Ronan sighs impatiently. “Are you fucking serious?”

Adam nods his head emphatically before he remembers that Ronan can’t see him either. “Yes,” he says, “I’m serious.”

Another sigh, and then he hears footsteps, this time coming back towards him. The lights turn back on.

“Wait until I get there before you turn them off,” he says to Ronan. Ronan rolls his eyes. He makes his way to the blanket in the center, walking just a little bit slower than strictly necessary.

“Are you ready now?” Ronan asks when Adam gets to the blanket.

“Not yet,” Adam responds, mostly to be difficult. He circles the blanket, humming thoughtfully, as if trying to find the best place to sit. He picks at a rumpled corner, bending down overdramatically to smooth it over with his hand.

He can hear Ronan grumbling from the other end of the cave.

He settles on a spot towards the side of the blanket, careful to leave enough space for Ronan, and plops himself down onto it. “Ok,” he says teasingly, “I’m ready.”

The lights flick off again, leaving only the faint glow of the penis shaped lights and the rad boom largos from their corral in the corner. He hears Ronan’s footsteps approaching him again.

“Took you long enough,” says Ronan.

Adam scoffs loudly so Ronan can hear him. “So what now?” he asks. “Are we just going to sit here in the dark or something?”

“Just give me a fucking second,” Ronan’s voice comes from somewhere close to him. Adam can hear him shuffling about. “I need to find my vacpack.”

“Wow,” says Adam, sarcastically. “It’s hard to find things in the dark? Gee, I _never_ would have guessed _that_ -”

“Shut up, Parrish.”

“I’m just saying, if you need to find something, we could, you know, _turn on the lights_ -”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“The lights have to be off for this,” says Ronan.

“For what?” asks Adam, annoyed.

Suddenly, with no warning, phosphor slimes start shooting out from the space next to Adam, floating around over their heads, bouncing off of walls, their normally soft glow bright and vivid against the near perfect darkness of the cave. The crystals shine in the sudden light, refracting it every which way, covering the cave walls in shimmering reflections that drifted with the gentle movements of the slimes above. The air itself seems to glisten as it flowed around them, like a rainbow shattered above them and shards of it were raining down on them.

Adam flops onto his back, his gaze fixed onto the ceiling. “Holy shit,” he says.

Ronan sits down on the blanket next to him, momentarily breaking his gaze on the far wall of the cave. “I told you to trust me,” he says, and shifts his head back to facing the cave wall.

Adam rolls his eyes. “I followed you here, didn’t I?” he says, teasing. Ronan shoves his shoulder lightly. Adam shoves him back. Ronan shoves him again.

“We used to do this a lot,” Ronan says after they finish pushing each other around, uncharacteristically quiet.

Adam glances at him out of the corner of his eye. “What’s that?”

“You know,” says Ronan. “My dad, my mom, me, Matthew, even Declan,” he subtly tries to shift his gaze away from Adam. “My dad would take my brothers and I out and we would gather up all the Phosphor slimes we could find, and my mom would bring some blankets and some pillows out to the Grotto, and we would…” he trails off. “We used to stay here for hours.”

Adam pictures it in his head, little baby Ronan and his brothers curled up on a blanket between their parents underneath the glow of the Phosphor slimes. He can feel his heart twinge at the image. “Yeah?” he asks, gently. “And you liked it?”

Ronan barks out a laugh. “Liked it?” he asks, his voice strained, still facing away from Adam. “I used to live for those days.”

Adam turns his head to look directly at him. “You don’t really do it anymore?” he asks.

Ronan exhales, something between a sigh and a scoff. “No,” he says, curt.

“No?” Adam asks softly.

“It’s not the same anymore, not without -” he cuts himself off. “I can’t just do it alone, you know?” he says over a cheap facsimile of his usual smile.

Adam’s breath hitches. “I’m here,” he says, before he can fully register it, before he can stop himself. “I’m here now.”

“Yeah,” says Ronan, shifting his gaze back to glance at Adam out of the corner of his eye. “Yeah, you are.” He sighs and lets himself sink onto the blanket. “God,” he says, sounding breathless, “I fucking missed this. I fucking love this.”

Adam rolls his body onto his side to face him. The glow of the phosphor slimes fill the cave, bouncing off the crystals on the wall, bathing all of Ronan in light, the sharp angles of his face, the long column of his neck. He thinks of Ronan, of how full of life he is, of how _brave_ he is, to take something _this precious_ and share it with him, share it with _Adam_ -

“Yeah,” repeats Adam, his eyes trained on Ronan. “You’re right. It _is_ beautiful.”

Ronan turns his body to meet his gaze. Behind him, the phosphor slimes flutter about, glowing like galaxies swirling across the night sky. He huffs out a laugh. Adam can feel his breath flow across his face, tickling his eyelashes. “You’re not even looking,” he says.

“I’m looking,” Adam responds.

Ronan’s face turns pink. He smiles, bashful, in a way Adam has never seen before. “You’re fucking looking at me,” he says, holding Adam’s gaze steadily.

“I know,” responds Adam, softer than before, his voice barely a whisper. He stays quiet, lost in Ronan’s gaze, drowning in the soft light reflected from Ronan’s eyes. For a moment, Ronan seems frozen too, locked into staring back. Then, slowly, he shifts, his face drifting closer to Adam’s. Adam can count his eyelashes from here, long and silky, as they drifted downwards to cover his half lidded eyes.

Adam let’s his eyes fall shut. He can feel the gentle press of Ronan’s nose against his cheek, the ghost of his breath on his lips. His head spins. His heartbeat skyrockets. Slowly, he lets himself fall forward -

Behind him, a rad boom largo explodes, rocking the cave with the force. Ronan jerks his head back violently. The phosphor slimes, launched by the shockwave, whiz across the cave like shooting stars, bouncing against the walls and ceiling. The crystals above them shake from the impact.

For a moment, the two of them remain quiet, frozen into a stunned silence. And then, like spring after a long winter, Ronan collapses on himself and starts laughing, loud, and wild, and full of life in his perfect and Ronan ways.

Adam joins him. He unlocks his muscles, lets his joints buckle in on themselves, and _laughs._ He’s never felt like this before, ever. He feels like Ronan’s laughter personified, like Ronan had hollowed him out and filled him with his laugh, unrestrained, and free, and _alive_. He rolls on top of Ronan and tucks his head in the crook of his neck, lets his cheek rest on his collarbone, feels the swell of his breath, the rhythm of his heart, feels him wrap his arms around Adam in response, and he laughs, and laughs, and feels, and feels -

(“Do you ever feel like dust?” Adam asks quietly.

Ronan pauses, pensive. “ _Quia pulvis es,_ ” he says, “ _et in pulverem reverteris._ ”

“What?” says Adam, his sleep addled mind desperately sifting through his half forgotton high school Latin classes for a translation.

“Our bodies are made out of dust,” says Ronan simply. “We _are_ dust.”

Adam glances at him. “Ronan,” he says, slightly worried now, “our bodies are made out of _cells_.”

Ronan rolls his eyes. “Yeah, and those cells are made out of _dust_.”

Adam’s worry grows. “No,” he says slowly, like he’s talking to a child, “those cells are made out of the organic matter we digest when we eat food -”

“That’s not what I fucking -” Ronan groans, cutting both Adam and himself off. “My dad told me about it,” he says, “how, like, when stars explode, they make all the shit that we are. Like - stardust or whatever. So -” Ronan makes a gesture with his hands. “It makes sense that you feel like dust, because you _are_ dust. From stars. Or something.”

“Huh,” Adam hums thoughtfully, slightly less worried about Ronan’s education level now. “But not everything comes from stars,” he points out. “The hydrogen in our bodies came from near the beginning of the universe, predating the existence of stars in general, and formed when the universe cooled enough to allow protons and neutrons to coalesce into nuclei -”

“Christ,” says Ronan, “ _shut up._ ” And then he bursts back into wild laughter.

“Yeah, ok,” says Adam, sounding more annoyed than he really feels, “go ahead. Laugh it up.”)

* * *

He’s started regularly taking Ronan’s calls for him on the Ranch Exchange. He’s not entirely sure how this had started, only that after he’d picked up one of Ronan’s calls when Ronan couldn’t be bothered to answer, word immediately spread that there was a way to do business with Lynch Farm and Ranch without _actually having to interact with Ronan,_ and apparently people started _directly asking for him by name._

(Ronan was perfectly fine with the arrangement, obviously. The less time he spent on the phone with _“those shitty ass fucking clowns”_ , the better, as far as he was concerned.)

So he honestly didn’t think he was overstepping his boundaries _too much_ when he picked up a call for Ronan on his personal terminal. It’s not like he’s planning on snooping through Ronan’s thing, and if Ronan didn’t want Adam to pick his phone up, he should have chosen a ringtone that wasn’t about _squash_ and didn’t drive Adam up the wall every time he heard it. And, really, what’s the worst that could happen. Adam’s already spent a solid two months living on a ranch with _only Ronan_ for company. He doubts anything could surprise him anymore.

Of course, that doesn’t stop him from being surprised when he finds himself face to face with none other than Richard Campbell Gansey III.

“Oh,” Adam startles, his head recoiling in confusion. “Gansey?”

Gansey looks equally shocked. “Adam!” he nearly shouts his name. “Wh-what are you doing there?”

“Ronan’s terminal wouldn’t stop ringing.” He pauses for a moment. “Why are _you_ calling Ronan’s personal terminal?”

“O-Oh,” Gansey stutters. For a moment, an almost guilty expression seems to flick across his face. “Well - it’s just - I had, uh, a question! You know, for our expedition tomorrow!”

“Expedition?” asks Adam.

“You know,” Gansey says, laughing awkwardly. “When we go to the, uh, ancient slime ruins.”

“Oh,” says Adam. “Oh! _You’re_ the historian that Ronan is taking to the slime ruins all the time, then.”

“Yes!” says Gansey, a little too enthusiastically. “Yes, that’s right! He’s taking me to see the ruins.”

“Oh,” Adam repeats. “Wait, so you’ve been on the same planet as me this entire time, then?”

“I - I suppose?”

“Oh,” says Adam. “Oh. Well. That’s - interesting.” He pauses. “Hold on a second. If you knew Ronan the entire time, why didn’t you say -” he cuts himself off, rendered mute by his dawning realization.

Ronan chooses exact that moment to return to his room. He freezes in his tracks as soon as he sees Adam, his gaze rapidly darting between Adam and Gansey’s increasingly guilty looking face on the terminal screen. Adam turns to face him.

He thinks about Gansey, about how likely it would be for him to suggest, to _encourage_ Adam to take a risky job on a planet he’s _never been to_ from a _complete stranger_. He thinks about _Ronan_ , and how likely it is that _he_ would be willing to leave his ranch in the hands of a complete stranger while he led _another_ complete stranger around _ancient slime ruins_ , of all things. How Gansey seemed so _absolutely sure_ about Ronan’s legitimacy. How Ronan had _never once_ asked who he was talking to over video chat every evening. How Gansey had just _somehow known_ what Ronan’s obscure job post had meant. How Ronan had seemingly accepted his application without even _reading his starmail_.

“You knew Ronan the _entire time_ ,” he repeats, mostly to himself. He turns back to face Gansey.

Gansey squirms. “Adam -”

“You set this up,” Adam interrupts, “didn’t you?” he asks. It’s not a question.

“I -” Gansey flounders, clearly at a loss for words. “Adam, I had to do _something_ ,” he says pleadingly. “You had nowhere else to stay for the summer, and you weren’t going to come stay with me, so -”

“So you _tricked_ me?” Adam interrupts him.

“I had no choice,” Gansey protests quietly.

“You could have _butt out_ like I told you to,” he says, his voice cold. “You could have _let me handle it myself_.”

“I couldn’t just stand by and watch!”

“You could have,” Adam retorts. “Because I would have _handled it -_ ”

“You couldn’t handle it, Adam!” Gansey shouts. “If I didn’t do anything, you would have ended up going back to -” he cuts himself off. “I couldn’t just _let_ that happen.”

“What makes you think you can just decide what can and cannot happen?” Adam demands. “Why do you get to decide what I should and shouldn’t do?”

Gansey gives him a look, imploring. “Adam, there’s no way you _want_ to go back there -”

“You don’t get to decide that for me!” says Adam.

“I - Adam -” Gansey stutters, “- I was only trying to help -”

“How many times do I have to tell you that I _don’t need your help_?” Adam yells.

“Please -”

“ _I’m_ the one who doesn’t want to go back there,” Adam says, forcing the bile back down his throat, “not you.”

“Adam -”

“And you!” Adam cuts him off, whirling around to fix his gaze onto Ronan, still standing stoically by the entrance, frozen in place. “You knew the entire time, too!”

Ronan says nothing.

“This whole time we’ve been on this ranch together -” he says, his finger pointing, accusatory, at his chest, his voice grows strained, “- all the stuff we did, and I was just some - some _pity project_ your friend forced onto you?”

Ronan says nothing.

“The time at the ocean - and the slimeball - and the hand cream - and - and the night in the Grotto -” he pauses, sucking in a harsh breath, “- how much of that was real?”

Ronan still says nothing, his face locked in place, like a statue.

The world collapses in on Adam. He feels like a fool - a joke - an idiot - like everything in the universe, everything from the galaxies above to the dust at his feet is laughing at him for ever believing, conceiving, _considering_ , that someone like Ronan could ever possibly fall for someone like -

“I - I trusted you,” he admits, his voice cracking. “I trusted you, and you _lied_ to me.”

Ronan meets his gaze. “I never lied,” he says finally.

Adam pauses, his chest heaving with each breath. “No,” he says. “No, you didn’t. But did you tell the truth?”

Ronan looks at him. Adam can see it, in the turn of his eyebrows, the curl of his lips, the shape of his eyes. He has his answer.

_Stupid boy,_ his father’s voice echoes inside his head. _How long are you going to live off of my charity? You know what’s going to happen if you keep taking things you haven’t earned?_

He pushes past Ronan and breaks into a run, sprinting out past the door.

“Adam!” he hears Ronan’s voice calling from behind him. He rubs the tears from his eyes. He doesn’t slow down.

* * *

The wildlands he’s running through are beautiful. The paved dirt pathways of the ranch have long since given way to grass, soft and springy to the touch underneath Adam’s bare feet. The wind is cool and fragrant, rushing past him as he runs. The sunlight streams through the trees, dappling the ground with spots of light and color.

_I wish Ronan were here to show me around,_ he thinks, and then he collapses on top of an old tree stump and sobs desperately into his hands.

* * *

By the time Adam regains the ability to breathe, drawing soft, shaky breaths into his trembling body, the sun had already sunk below the horizon, plunging the clearing around him into darkness.

He sits up, rubs the tear stains off of his cheeks, brushes the dirt off of his scuffed knees, presses gently at the cuts on his feet, his eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness around him. The trees tower above him, tall and shadowy, the air filled with sounds he’s never heard before. He suddenly remembers that he is alone on an alien planet with no clue where he is, no supplies or equipment, and he’s not even wearing shoes right now.

Not that he’s surprised. This whole endeavor has been one terrible decision after another.

He forces himself to get up and start building a temporary shelter by the light of the moon, because he’s not going to sit around and mope anymore, and he’s _definitely not_ going to go back to Ronan’s ranch. He leans some sticks against eachother. They fall apart. He leans them against a tree. They fall apart again. He tries to get his brain to stop coming up with shitty metaphors between the sticks he’s arranging and his life. He kicks the sticks. He’s not wearing shoes. He cradles his now throbbing foot in his hands.

He’s just about resigned himself to sleeping on a vaguely mossy rock when the wild phosphor slimes pop out of the ground like freshly blooming flowers, leaping and gliding past him on their tiny wings, filling the clearing around him with their gentle, dancing glow.

Everything on this planet is _so fucking beautiful_. Everything on this planet reminds him of Ronan. Adam suddenly feels like crying again.

He grabs the nearbest phosphor slime instead, cradles it against his chest, brings his knees up to hold it tighter, squishes his cheek against the soft, jiggling body. He wraps his arms tightly around it and gives it a squeeze, presses his face into it and exhales in a voiceless scream. The slime giggles in his embrace, completely oblivous of Adam’s attempt to drain his sorrow into it’s squishy body.

_“Sometimes when I’m angry or stressed, I just go out and fucking squeeze a slime. Always made me feel better,”_ Ronan had said, once.

_“What if it’s spikey? What if it explodes?”_ Adam had asked. _“Or you get radiation poisoning? Or -”_

_“Obviously you don’t do it to the explosive ones,”_ Ronan had rolled his eyes.

God damnit.

He should have known this was a terrible idea. He _had_ known this was a terrible idea, and he’d gone for it anyway, because it was probably better than going back to the mining stations. Because it was a job, and he was good at jobs. Because Gansey suggested it.

Because Gansey suggested it, and _Adam trusted him_.

_Maybe this was meant to happen,_ thinks Adam, digging his fingers harshly into the slime’s gelatinous body. _Maybe this is a sign that I’m meant to be alone._ It had certainly been that way on the mining station. People tended to avoid him, and he tended to avoid them right back, the quiet kid in the corner, the fly on the wall, the observer. He’d watched other kids play together. He’d watched them laugh together, cry together, learn together, _be together_. He’d watched them _make friends_.

And the first and only and closest thing he’d had to that had blown up in his face.

He'd craved human connection for as long as he can remember. He'd spent his whole childhood alone, afraid of his father, afraid of _everyone_ on that stupid mining station. The undeniable truth was that when he'd got out, when he'd got the chance to meet people on his own terms without the baggage of everyone knowing about him and knowing about his father, when he'd met Gansey, who'd seemed so earnest, and smart, and _kind_ , when he'd met _Ronan_ , beautiful, open Ronan, he'd been so caught up in the euphoria of connection that he'd forgotten to protect himself. He'd forgotten the rules. He'd let Gansey in. He'd let _Ronan_ in. And now -

The slime he’s holding wrests itself from Adam’s grip and bounces away. He has enough time to come up with a shitty metaphor about _everything in his life betraying and abandoning him_ before he catches the panicked, terrified look on its face. Adam stands quickly. In all the time he’s been here, the past couple months spent doing nothing but ranching slimes, he’s never once seen a slime look _scared_.

He turns around.

He’d read about tarrs in the _Slimepedia_ , horrifying amalgamations of too many plorts in too few bodies, blackened, rainbow goo swirling with murderous intent. Ronan had warned him about them too, showed him his carefully arranged plort sorting system, the only part of his farm that he’d bothered to organize before Adam had shown up, had warned Adam to be careful not to let the largos get their hands on other types of plorts. Adam had complied, wholy uninterested in getting eaten by a malicious blob.

And now one was barrelling straight towards him. He panics, quickly racking his brain for a possible course of action. 

_“The only way to stop a tarr outside of incinerating it or throwing it into the slime sea is with fresh water,”_ the Slimepedia had said. Adam looks around him. No water. No dice.

_“Alternatively many ranchers recommend running away with their arms waving, and screaming.”_

 _Good plan,_ thinks Adam, and then he turns around and slams his forehead straight into Ronan Lynch’s chin, sending them both sprawling onto the floor.

“Fuck?!” says Ronan from underneath him, who has evidently managed to follow and find Adam at some point, apparently. He lifts his head up, unintentionally jamming his face into the space right in front of Adam’s face, and Adam feels every single emotion he has in the space of half a second before Ronan inevitably spots the tarr barrelling towards them and starts desperately scrambling for the nozzle of his vacpack.

The tarr. The vacpack. _Water._

Adam also scrambles, trying to grab the nozzle. Except Ronan was already reaching over to grab the nozzle, so his hand brushes over the top of Ronan’s arm. He recoils his hand. Ronan also recoils his hand. _He’s sitting on top of Ronan._ He scrambles to get off of Ronan. This apparently reminds Ronan that _Adam is sitting on top of him_. He scrambles to get out from underneath Adam.

The tarr comes closer.

 _Fuck_. Adam quickly climbs back on top of Ronan to reach over his body and grab the vacpack. Ronan also reaches for the vacpack again, whipping his hand around, accidentally knocking Adam’s arm out from under him, sending him face first into Ronan’s chest. Adam get’s a face full of Ronan’s chest. He desperately tries to get his face off of Ronan’s chest. Ronan desperately tries to push Adam off of him. Neither of them are reaching for the vacpack.

The tarr comes even closer.

Ronan curses and plants his foot against Adam’s chest, throwing him off in one fluid motion. He grabs the vacpack and desperately sprays water in the direction of the tarr, drenching Adam in the process.

The tarr is gone by the time Adam sits up, reduced to a pile of vaguely disgusting goo behind him. The phosphor slimes slowly start to drift back towards them. For a moment, he and Ronan just lay together, breathing heavily, surrounded by the night air.

Ronan sits up and gives Adam a look. “Ow?!” he says, gripping at the spot on his chin where Adam had accidentally headbutted him.

Adam wants to laugh. He wants to scream. He wants to cry. He wants to hold Ronan and never let go again. And then he remembers that he’s supposed to be mad at Ronan, so he huffs out an annoyed breath and whips his body around to go back to sitting on his mossy rock.

“Parrish?” Ronan calls out after him, sounding out of breathe. “You’re just going to leave me on the floor here?” Adam remains quiet, plants himself down on the rock facing firmly away from Ronan, stays looking towards the ground. 

* * *

It's a couple of moments before he feels Ronan join him, the moss shifting slightly under the weight of his body as he slowly sinks to the floor beside him. Adam focuses his gaze to a patch of dark blue flowers next to him. The gentle light of the phosphor slimes fill the clearing, illuminating the ground in an almost ethereal glow. The two of them sit there together, quiet.

“Why are you doing this?” Adam asks, softly.

Ronan scoffs. “You ran off into the woods alone, at night, with no vacpack. Or shoes. _Obviously_ I had to run after you -”

“Not that,” interrupts Adam. “ _This._ ”

“And you said _I’m_ bad at explaining things.”

“You know what I mean,” says Adam. “The slimeball. The hand cream. The - all of that,” he cuts himself off.

“What about it?” asks Ronan.

_Why did you feel the need to get close to me?_ thinks Adam. _Why did you open up to me? Why did you make me feel like I had a chance? Why did you make me feel like you might actually like me? Why did you make me feel -_

“If you were just doing this because Gansey asked you to, then why did you do any of it?” says Adam out loud.

“Why wouldn’t I have?” says Ronan.

“Ronan, I -” he stops himself, the words on the tip of his tongue. _I know you_. He clearly doesn’t. “You don’t seem like the type to put this much effort into a ruse,” he says instead.

“I’m not,” Ronan admits.

“Then why did you do it?” Adam asks again.

He feels Ronan’s body shift, though he can’t tell if Ronan’s turning towards or away from him. “Why do you think I did it?” he asks quietly.

Adam pulls at his shirt, still dripping wet. He feels - small. Insignificant. Inconsequesential. _”Dust,”_ yells the tiny, horrid voice in the back of his mind, coming to him unbidden.

“Pity,” he says, nearly choking on the word. “Was it pity?”

Ronan takes a deep breath.

“No,” he says, “it was never pity.” Adam turns to face him, only to find that Ronan isn’t looking at him, is focusing intently on a spot in the distance. He is sharp lines and angles, his face sweaty and caked in dirt, his dark clothes in stark contrast to the grass and flowers and soft light filtering down around them, and yet he manages to look like he belongs, as if he, too, is just another feature of the grove around them. He drops his hands down onto the ground next to him, no more than a fingertip away from where Adam’s own hand lie, fidgeting with the grass around his legs. Adam’s stomach does flips.

“The stuff I did,” he continues, “it was never because of pity.” Adam swallows, but otherwise remained quiet. His breathing evens out, but inside his chest, his heart still pounds away, awaiting Ronan’s next words. “I mean, at first it was just a favor for Gansey,” he admits,  
and Adam’s heart drops, “but after I talked to you, it was…” Ronan trails off, still pointedly not looking at Adam.

“It was?” Adam prompts him softly.

Ronan coughs awkwardly. “A couple years ago, after my parents died -”

“What?” Adam interrupts him, confused.

“Just let me finish,” says Ronan. “After they died, everyone - my friends, my siblings, Gansey - they all treated me like I was some - some fragile fucking piece of shit.”

“A ‘fragile fucking piece of shit’?” Adam repeats.

“Look - I can’t think of anything fragile right now,” says Ronan. “The point is that it was fucking annoying. Everyone would only touch me with kiddy gloves because they were afraid I would snap if they did anything else, and I hated it.”

“What does this have to do with anything?” says Adam.

“Don’t rush me, I’m getting there,” Ronan elbows him back into silence. “When you first got here,” he continues, “I thought you were the same. That you were just - being nice to me because you had to.”

“Ok,” says Adam. “And then?”

“And then,” Ronan pauses to rest his chin on his hands with a dreamy sigh. “And then you insulted me,” he says, his expression soft, gently exhaling the statement with a laugh.

“Are you joking?” says Adam. “That’s your story? It was because I _insulted you_?”

“Yes! No!” says Ronan. “It was because you were _real!_ Because you didn’t treat me like some tragic, broken thing! Because you actually told me what you thought! Because you were so fun, and witty, and beautiful, I couldn’t help but fall in love -” Ronan cuts himself off.

“You what?” asks Adam.

“Look. You - you’re smart,” Ronan stutters out, “and funny. And a hard worker.” The back of his neck is turning red, Adam realizes. “You - you make it less lonely. You treat me like a _person_. After my dad, it was - I mean - I was,” he stops, and turns to face him, but his eyes still look away, pointing downwards towards the ground. Adam can clearly see the blush across his face from this angle. “You make it less - less bad,” Ronan cringes. “Fuck, I’m so bad at this -”

“Holy shit,” Adam says softly. “You’re being serious, aren’t you?”

“Yes! Obviously!” says Ronan. Adam nearly jumps out of his skin at the sensation of touch on his hand, his heart flipping when he feels Ronan’s fingers curl around his own. Ronan turns, finally meeting Adam’s gaze, his eyes glittering in the first light of the sun as it slowly begins to rise into the sky.

“Ronan -”

“I told you, didn’t I?” says Ronan. He reaches out to grab Adam’s other hand, cradling them both in his own. “I never lie, Adam,” he says, and his gaze burrows deep into Adam, fierce and soft, earnest and unsure, steadfast and hesitent, piercing straight through to his heart, filling him with planets and stars and galaxies and supernovas and quasars and nebulas and everything else that makes the universe and Adam -

Adam kisses him.

* * *

That night, he finds himself on the mining station again.

“Not this again,” he says, annoyed. “Ok. What do you have for me this time -“ he turns around and cuts himself off, stunned to find himself staring at a mirror image of his own face.

“Stupid boy,” his reflection says to him.

Adam rolls his eyes. “And just when I thought you were coming up with new material. Let me guess, next you’re going to tell me I’m useless and use a thesaurus to come up with a long string of stupid insults. And then you’ll call me dust.”

“You think we’ve escaped our destiny? You think we’ve the power to rend the cosmos? You think _a kiss_ can change our nature?”

“I mean - it _was_ a really nice kiss.”

His reflection ignores him, its face locked into a blank stare, its eyes like mirrors. “No matter how much we endeavor - no matter how much we endure - no matter what actions we take, we are bound by the chains of our own true nature, destined for Sisyphean toil, writhing like a worm impaled on a hook -”

“That is,” says Adam, “a graphic and unecessary metaphor.”

“- you know the truth. We can struggle and we can scream, but we can never be more than a pitiable wretch -”

“Ok, really you don’t have to -”

“- a lamentable fool -”

“ _I literally predicted this -_ ”

“- a monstrous outcast, a beast trapped in its own stupidity, an exile bound to pariahdom, a vile and grotesque creature as unloveable as it is incapable of loving, dust, dust, _dust_ -”

“ _Quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris,_ ” he remembers Ronan’s voice from that night, bathed in the light of the Grotto, soft and deep and reassuring. “ _For dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return._ ”

“I get it, ok? You’re dust, I’m dust, we’re all fucking dust!” Adam interrupts. He sighs, curls his hands into fists, squares his shoulders. “Ronan’s dust too! And you know what? Ronan is dust, and he’s still kind, and loving, and gentle, and sweet, and wild, and fun, and _alive_. Ronan is dust, and -” he cuts himself off, pauses to take a deep breath, steadying himself before continuing. “Ronan is dust and I _still_ love him. So why should being dust make _me_ unloveable?

“It is no more the nature of dust to love than of fish to walk, of birds to swim, of man to soar. Know our place, boy,” his reflection’s voice rings out around him. “We cannot love: we are of but dust.”

“There are fish that can walk,” says Adam, rolling his eyes, “and birds that can swim. Ever heard of ducks? Penguins? Checkmate, loser.”

His reflection’s lips curl. “You think your pedantic arguments can quell your fears? You think you can logic away your misgivings? You think you can _debate_ the chains that bind you to your eternal suffering into releasing you?”

“Clearly not!” Adam throws his hands up, frustrated, gesturing to the walls around them. “I’m still here aren’t I? All I wanted after yesterday was a good night’s sleep, but I still showed up here! Obviously I can’t get rid of you. I didn’t need you to tell me that.”

He sees his eyes narrow. “You resign yourself so easily to endless nightmare?”

“You call yourself a nightmare?” Adam retorts. “You’re more like - what even are you? A vaguely ominous recurring dream? A figment of my imagination? A metaphorical representation of my shitty childhood? Honestly? If _I’m_ dust, then _you_ barely even count as dust. You’re fucking - _less_ than dust.” He groans, and sinks down to lay on the floor. “Why am I even arguing with you? God, I need therapy.”

His reflection stays towering above him, its face downcast. “You think your meager efforts have purged the inadequacies from our body? You think we’ve earned his heart?” it demands. “You think we deserve his love?”

Adam sighs. “No,” he says. “I didn’t earn shit. I don’t _deserve_ shit either,” he admits. He rolls onto his side, his eyes fixed onto his hands in front of him. He forces down his fear, his insecurities, his knee-jerk reaction to possess, to control. Ronan is brave; Adam can be too. “There’s nothing for me to earn. Nothing for me to deserve. Ronan’s heart is _his to give_ ,” he says firmly, “not mine to take. And he gave it to me. What I _earned_ and what I _deserve_ don’t matter.”

“You trust us to hold it?” his reflection asks. “You trust us to cherish it? Treasure it? Nurture it?” It shakes its head at Adam, dissapprovingly. “Stupid boy. I am you. You are me. We are, by nature, petty, vindictave, spiteful, jealous, insecure, selfish, cruel, _destructive_ -”

Adam nods his head in agreement. “All true,” he says.

“You would entrust his heart to us?”

Adam closes his eyes. He refuses to look up at his reflection. “I didn’t entrust it to me,” he says, “ _Ronan_ did.” He pauses, feels the cold station floor beneath the palms of his hands. “I just have to - try not to fuck it up, I guess,” he says.

His reflection stops. For a moment, all he hears is the ventillation, the creaks and groans of the station around him, the sound of his own breathing.

“Such a pitiful being,” his reflection says to him, quieter than before, “that deliberately chooses wrong from right for spite and spite alone. You know the rules.”

Adam spares him a glance. “The rules?”

“‘Every action requires an equal and opposite reaction’,” his reflection says. “Yet what have you offered Ronan in exchange?”

“I gave him my heart too, obviously,” says Adam, quiet.

“You think that will suffice?” it retorts. “You think that pathetic, fickle thing can possibly begin to compare? You offer nothing of value.”

“True,” says Adam. “So what?”

“‘So what’, he says,” his reflection parrots at him. “All creation abides by the rules. All. Every molecule, every atom, every quark, every star, every galaxy, every single speck of _dust_ -”

“I don’t care about your rules,” interrupts Adam.

“ _My_ rules?” his reflection barks out a short, curt laugh. “You think they’re _my_ rules?”

Adam stops. He cuts his immediate response off, forces it down in his throat, forces himself to really think.

“No,” he admits, a dawning realization, the sun rising above the horizon. “They’re not your rules. They’re -”

He wakes up in his bed, his cheek pressed against an embarrassing amount of drool, his pillow held tightly to his chest, his covers pooled around his feet.

Slowly, he unfurls his body, rolls out of bed, grabs his pillow, and pads down the hall and through the open door to Ronan’s room. He quietly tiptoes to the bed, carefully avoids the clothes strewn about on the floor, and sets his pillow down next to Ronan’s head. He lifts the covers and gently slips into bed next to him.

Ronan jerks awake. “Parrish?” he whispers.

“Go back to sleep,” Adam responds, pulling the covers back over himself. Ronan shifts, turning around to face Adam, his arms coming to wrap around his body. Adam scoots closer in response, tucks his head into the crook of Ronan’s neck, feels the thrum of his heartbeat, steady through his skin.

“Did you have a bad dream?” Ronan asks, his lips pressed against Adam’s temple, the rumble of his voice resonating from the top of Adam’s head to the tips of his toes. He brings his hand up to run his fingers tenderly through Adam’s hair.

Adam hums contentedly. “Not bad,” he responds, already drifting off again from Ronan’s ministrations. He curls up deeper, sighing against the stroke of Ronan's fingers, and, for once, he lets himself feel warm. “Just - weird,” he says.

* * *

They have to stop making out when Ronan hears Blue’s voice yelling at them from the entrance to the farm. Adam would love to blame his own lack of perception on his faulty hearing, but really, he’s pretty sure he’d miss an earthquake if Ronan kissed him hard enough.

They find Blue standing next to the teleporters near the Lab. 

“Sorry Adam, he wouldn’t stop whining so I brought him here to see you,” she says looking at Adam, except Adam’s not looking back. He’s looking straight into the eyes of Richard Campbell Gansey III who’s standing right next to her, fidgiting uncomfortably.

Ronan meets her gaze instead. “Want to go play slime ball?” he says, casually ignoring the growing silence between Adam and Gansey. Blue shrugs, and the two of them promptly leave them to their own devices.

“Hello, Adam,” Gansey says stiffly. There are dark circles under his eyes, and he’s fidgeting with his hands, but he still meets Adam’s gaze, his expression at once hesitant and hopeful.

Adam points his vacpack at him and sprays his face with water.

“Hey Gansey,” he says, looking down at where Gansey now lay sprawled on the floor. “How have you been?”

“I’m fine,” Gansey responds, blinking the water droplets out of his eyes. “How are you?”

Adam smiles. He never could stay mad for long, not at Gansey. “I’m good,” he says. He holds his hand out to him, in offering.

Gansey smiles back. He grabs Adams hand and lets himself get pulled off of the floor and into a hug with Adam.

“I’m – I’m glad,” he says as they pull apart. If it weren’t for the choked up way he sounded, Adam might have chalked up the wet look of his eyes to the torrent of water he’d just taken from the nozzle of Adam’s vacpack.

“But seriously,” Adam says, maintaining his farm grip on Gansey hand, “go behind my back again and I’ll launch your cold, dead body into the vacuum of space.”

Gansey nods. “Duly noted,” he says. Adam drops his hand.

“Come on,” he says, turning around to lead Gansey back to the ranch. “Let’s get something to drink.”

* * *

“So,” says Gansey as Adam pours them both glasses of phase lemonade, “how was your summer?”

Adam rolls his eyes. “You were here for most of it,” he points out.

“I wasn’t here for the past week,” responds Gansey.

“But you were here for the rest of it,” says Adam, sipping at his lemonade.

“How was the past week, then?” asks Gansey

“It was fine,” says Adam.

Gansey gives him a look. “Define ‘fine’,” he says, squinting.

Adam sighs, and rolls his eyes again. “Just drink your phase lemonade,” he says.

That seems to give Gansey pause for thought. He looks at his lemonade, confused. “Why is it called phase lemonade?” he asks.

“Because it’s made out of phase lemons.”

“Phase lemons?” says Gansey, looking bewildered.

“Yep,” says Adam. He gestures at a tree in the distance, flickering in and out of existence. “Phase lemons,” he says.

Gansey stands up, craning his neck and squinting to get a better view of the tree. “What a curious phenomenon,” he says, turning back to Adam. “How do you suppose they work?”

Adam shrugs, uninterested. “Maybe it’s like Schrödinger’s cat,” he suggests. “Like - they exist but they also don’t exist. Or something.”

“But according to the tenants of the thought experiment as defined by Schrödinger, the object should collapse from it’s superposition upon outside observation,” says Gansey, “and I’m _clearly observing_ the lemon tree, yet it remains in flux. Also, Schrödinger’s cat was meant to illustrate a _paradox_ , not an observable phenomenon -”

“Gansey -” Adam interrupts, “- you are probably the greatest friend I have ever had the priviledge of knowing in my entire life.”

“Oh,” says Gansey, looking startled, “well, Adam, that’s really quite nice of you to -”

“I do not give a single shit about physics,” says Adam.

Gansey barks out a surprised laugh. “Aren’t you going to take a physics class next semester?” he asks, looking amused.

“I do not give enough shits about physics to talk about it outside of class,” says Adam. “I don’t care how the lemons work. The point is that we can turn them into lemonade, and they’ll be tasty.”

Gansey laughs. “Fair point,” he concedes. His expression dampens slightly as he turns back to face Adam. “Did you really mean what you said?” he asks, almost timidly.

“Yes, Gansey,” says Adam indulgently, “you are the greatest friend I’ve ever had."

" _Adam_ -"

"Even though you tricked me and signed me up for the worst summer of my entire life,” Adam finishes.

“Oh _come on_ ,” Gansey starts. “It wasn’t _that_ bad of a job, was it?”

Adam gives him a look. “Really?” he asks. “You’re going to go with _that_ argument?”

“Why not?”

Adam snorts. “You know I got fired, right?”

Gansey blinks. “Ronan _fired_ you?”

“Apparently it’s ‘against company policy’ to date an employee,” says Adam, rolling his eyes.

“Date?” asks Gansey.

“Are you making fun of my company policies?” Ronan shouts from where he and Blue are playing slimeball.

“You hired some random idiot off the internet to run your ranch because your best friend told you to,” Adam shouts back.

“Don’t call my fucking boyfriend an idiot, you idiot,” Ronan yells. Blue takes the opportunity to repeatedly throw the slime into the basket while Ronan’s distracted.

“You’re losing to a girl who’s a foot shorter than you,” shouts Adam. Ronan gives him the finger. So does Blue.

“ _Boyfriend?_ ” asks Gansey.

“Oh yeah,” says Adam, casually fanning himself with one hand while drinking his lemonade with his other. “Ronan and I are dating now, by the way.”

It would be funny how flabbergasted Gansey looks if it wasn't so - actually no, it’s just funny. Adam should really take a picture. “Since when?”

Adam hums, pretending to think about it. “Since a week ago,” he says, nodding his head firmly in affirmation.

“I - what - _I asked you how your week was going!_ ” Gansey sputters.

“And I answered truthfully,” says Adam, nodding his head sagely. “My week was fine.”

“ _I asked you to define what you meant by ‘fine’ -_ ”

“Oh, phase lemonade, fucking sweet,” Ronan saves him from Gansey’s impending meltdown, reaching over him to grab the pitcher and pour the lemonade directly into his open mouth. Adam is grossed out for the three seconds before he remembers that he’d just spent the last hour or so sticking his tongue down Ronan’s throat.

“Do you really have to drink from the pitcher?” says Blue, annoyed.

Ronan ignores her, instead leaning over Adam to set the pitcher back down. “So, are you and Gansey ok now? I’m tired of his bitching and moaning over starmail,” and Adam can see the drops of sweat glisten as they run down his neck, the ways his chest heaves up and down with each breath that he takes, the taut, sinewy muscle of his arms as they rest right next to Adam’s face -

“You’re hot as fuck,” says Adam, “and it’s really distracting.”

Gansey spits out his drink. Blue gawks at him. Ronan nearly tips over. “ _Holy shit_ ,” he says, clutching his hands at his chest like an affronted maiden, a gesture that would be comical if it wasn’t _strangely attractive_. “You can’t just say that _out loud_ , Parrish, _fuck_.”

Adam rolls his eyes and nonchalantly picks his drink back up. “You’re not my boss,” he says, taking a noisy sip, sucking the last of the lemonade up through his straw. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

* * *

“Do you have to check that right before we sleep,” Ronan grumps at him, looking absurdly cozy bundled inside the blankets of their newly shared bed.

Adam looks away from his terminal long enough to dramatically yank the edge of the covers up, purposefully exposing Ronan to the cold night air around them as he settles into his place next to him. Ronan makes a surprised whining sound at him, flailing his arms to try to pull the blankets back around him.

“I’ll be done in a second,” Adam says. He sets the cup he’d been holding down on the nightstand, some old Lynch family recipe for curing nightmares that contained far too much sugar for something that’s meant to be drank before bedtime and that Adam dutifully sips at anyway. “I just need to check my starmail.”

Ronan curls his body closer to him, no doubt a devious effort to get him to abandon his responsibilies and indulge in Ronan’s debaucheries. It’s nearly very, very effective. Ronan’s not wearing a shirt under there. Or pants, for that matter. “What kind of starmail,” he asks, his voice huskier than necessary for someone asking about starmail.

Adam inclines the screen towards Ronan to let him see. “I got accepted by the _Viscera Cleanup Detail.”_

“Oh, shit,” says Ronan, clearly surprised that Adam _actually showed him_. “You going to go be, what, a fucking space janitor or something?” he asks.

Adam scoffs, setting his terminal down on the nightstand beside him, careful not to spill his drink. “Hell no,” he says. He slides underneath the covers, tucks his face into Ronan’s bare chest, shoves his cold hands into the warm space between Ronan’s thighs. Ronan yelps in protest, and shoves him. Adam shoves him back. _I’m not going anywhere,_ he thinks. “That sounds stupid,” he says out loud.

**Author's Note:**

> Other fic writers, intelligent, have brains that work: Wouldn't it be cute :) if my otp :) met :) in a :) coffee shop :) or if one was a florist :) and the other :) was a tattoo artist :) wouldn't that just be swell :) what if they were roommates :)
> 
> Me, idiot, no functional brain cells: ok but like what if -


End file.
